One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all appeals as well as leaves to appeal granted so you will know what the SCC will soon be dealing with (January 26 to February 22, 2019 inclusive).

Appeals

Civil Procedure/Private International Law: Foreign Judgments
Barer v. Knight Brothers LLC, 2019 SCC 13 (37594) 

The jurisdiction of the Utah Court is recognized; presenting substantive arguments in . . . [more]

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

Price Security Holdings Inc. v. Klompas & Rothwell, 2019 BCCA 36

AREAS OF LAW: Property; Leases; Trusts; Beneficiary; Standing to sue third-party debtor

~Special circumstances must be established to justify a departure from the general rule that a beneficiary cannot directly sue a third-party debtor of the trust.~

BACKGROUND
Fort Quadra Holdings Ltd. is the registered owner of a commercial building in Victoria. The Appellant, Klompas . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

COMMUNICATIONS : La Loi sur la presse ne s’applique pas à un article publié sur un site Internet d’information en continu; le mot «journal» dans la Loi sur la presse ainsi que le renvoi aux formalités de la Loi sur les journaux et autres publications constituent un obstacle infranchissable.

Intitulé . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs (newest first):

• Conflict Lawyer (Part-time) | Vancouver, Calgary, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal
  (Gowling WLG)
• Policy Counsel (Full-time) | Ottawa, ON
  (Federation of Law Societies of Canada)
• Paralegal (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Ecojustice)
• Part-Time Research Lawyer (Contract Role) | Alberta

A recent Alberta privacy case, P2019-ND-006 (in PDF), deals with a breach of salary information about identifiable individuals under the Personal Information Protection Act(PIPA). The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Alberta found that “A reasonable person would consider that the identity and salary information could be used to cause the significant harms of hurt, humiliation and embarrassment, particularly if shared with individuals who have a personal or professional relationship with the affected individuals.”

What happened?

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have set the basic framework for the right to be forgotten. Recent case law from Germany offers an insight into its application on the ground.

The right to be forgotten as initially created in the Google Spain case (C-131/12) and now further developed in art. 17 GDPR provides data subjects with the right to have their personal data erased by a data processing controller (most prominently search engines) under specific circumstances. For search engines, though, balancing the diverging rights and interests of publishers and . . . [more]

Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

When Canadian Courts Cite the Major Philosophers: Who Cites Whom in Canadian Caselaw

Queen’s University Legal Research Paper No. 2017-090; CLLR 42:2

Nancy McCormack is an Associate Professor and Law Librarian at Queen’s University. She has authored and co-authored numerous books including the How to Understand Statutes and Regulations, Annotated Federal . . . [more]

Fitness software for phones, watches and other wearable devices is common. So when does software cross a line and need to comply with medical device legislation?  

Medical devices used for health purposes are regulated and must meet certain standards or approvals depending on a risk profile. In Canada medical devices are rated from class 1 through 4, class 4 requiring the most scrutiny. 

Health Canada recently published draft guidelines on when software has a medical purpose that requires it to follow the medical device standards.  

For example: 

Software intended for maintaining or encouraging a healthy lifestyle, such as general wellness . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. R. v. Jarvis, 2019 SCC 10

[5] In my view, circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy for the purposes of s. 162(1) of the Criminal Code are circumstances in which a person would reasonably expect not to be the subject of the type of observation or recording that in fact occurred. To determine whether a person had . . . [more]

How hard can it be to find that someone who takes surreptitious videos of the breasts of young women who have not given consent is guilty of voyeurism? As it turns out, more complex than one might think.

In R. v. Jarvis, the Supreme Court of Canada took a strong stand against “voyeurism”, particularly in the context of that case. It took what seems to be an inordinate effort of analysis to get there, though. . . . [more]

The Walter Owen Book Prize, awarded by the Canadian Foundation For Legal Research, recognizes exceptional legal research and writing that contribute significantly to Canadian legal literature.

The Prize, now $15,000.00, was created in celebration of the life of Walter Owen, Q.C., P.C., prominent member of the Law Society of British Columbia, former Lieutenant Governor of that province, past President of the Canadian Bar Association and founding President of what is now the Canadian Foundation For Legal Research.

ELIGIBILITY

• A book, substantial in nature, which is an entirely new work (or a previous title’s complete revision), judged by the Prize Jury

It doesn’t take too much reading to understand that technology is crucial to the success of any modern law firm. With the mergers and investments in LegalTech continuing to rise, law firms truly cannot invest too much in tech and innovation. I think we can expect to see the below example more often:

A law firm that does everything starts from scratch with founders having both deep business and legal expertise. They commit to being early adopters of technology. It takes spent three years and $5M in custom technology, but they are able to deliver on the vaunted promise of . . . [more]