Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

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. Douez v. Facebook, Inc., 2018 BCCA 186 (CanLII)

[1] This is an appeal from an order of the Supreme Court of British Columbia certifying a claim as a class proceeding. The claim arises out of a practice undertaken by Facebook, under which advertisements displayed to a Facebook member’s “friends” could include a statement that the member “liked” the advertised product, service, or organization. Members were not remunerated for the endorsements, and the plaintiff contends that Facebook did not have their consent to publish them. The plaintiff alleges that the practice constituted a tort under s. 3(2) of the Privacy Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 373.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Alberta Union of Provincial Employees v Alberta, 2020 ABCA 284 (CanLII)

[47] As explained in Vavilov, administrative decision makers are not bound by their previous decisions in the same sense as courts are bound by stare decisis. Nevertheless, those affected by administrative decisions are entitled to expect that like cases will generally be treated alike.

[48] Parity in penalties is an important consideration, but parity cannot be fully achieved unless all the employees disciplined for involvement in the same incident are brought before the same arbitration board at the same time.

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3. R v Tessier, 2020 ABCA 289 (CanLII)

[77] Authentication of surveillance video footage may not always require separate authentication of its time/date stamp. In R v Saddleback, 2016 ABCA 204, this Court held that such footage was admissible on the basis of evidence that it was a substantially accurate depiction of the accused in a 7-11 store. The Court rejected the submission that it was necessary to authenticate the time stamp of the video which was known to be “out by one hour”. Mr Tessier cites R v Ball, 2019 BCCA 32 for the proposition that the time stamp on surveillance video evidence always requires separate authentication. However, that case deals with a slightly different problem namely, how to authenticate a copy of Facebook message alleged to have been written by a particular person. The Court held that, if the copies of the Facebook messages were tendered as evidence of precisely when the messages were sent, the time stamp on the messages must be shown to be “sufficiently accurate and reliable”: Ball at para 87. It did not elaborate on what “sufficient” meant.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Bisaillon c. Bouvier, 2020 QCCA 115 (CanLII)

[74] Le résumé réitère donc en des termes différents le contenu de l’article 10 de la convention de médiation et y ajoute la mention que la mise en application, même partielle, de l’entente peut constituer une reconnaissance de cette entente.

[75] Le processus de médiation est confidentiel. Tant les parties que le médiateur sont ainsi tenus de garder secrets la nature et le contenu des échanges qui y ont lieu. Ce caractère confidentiel découle d’une règle de preuve émanant de la common law connue sous le vocable de privilège relatif aux règlements. Celle-ci est maintenant codifiée au Code de procédure civile…

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

* As of January 2014 we measure the total amount of time spent on the pages rather than simply the number of hits; as well, a case once mentioned won’t appear again for three months.