I would like to thank my colleagues at Harrison Pensa for being Firm Guest Bloggers on Slaw this week. Their articles focus on emerging issues both in substantive law, and the practice of law itself.

I’d like to share some thoughts on the emerging field of social media law, which includes both of those aspects.

Social media has created many challenges for business, including disparate issues such as violations of copyright, trade-marks, confidential information, and privacy, as well as pushing the boundaries on things such as defamation and employer control over employee actions.

Businesses, including law firms, are racing to . . . [more]

As readers of Slaw will know, we approached Maritime Law Book a little over a year ago with the idea of a collaboration in which MLB would select certain of its case summaries for Slaw to make freely available online. Slaw converts the summary to HTML and places a precis of it online, along with a link to the full summary in PDF on Slaw’s site and a link to the free version on the MLB site of the unedited case report. (The more than 300 such summaries are available here; the criteria by which MLB selects them can . . . [more]

Between 1993 and 2003, Canada’s overall divorce rate fell by more than 11%. The most recent statistics available, compiled in 2005 by Statistics Canada, indicated that the divorce rate was hovering around 40%.

However, the same study found that divorce rates for persons over 50 years of age had increased markedly. Similarly, a recent study conducted by Bowling Green State University confirmed that American divorce rates among couples over 50 had doubled within the last 20 years.

The conclusion is clear: Boomer marriages are falling apart at a growing rate, bucking an overall trend towards fewer divorces among members of . . . [more]

Until very recently, most knowledgeable class actions practitioners in Canada would have said that there have been very few full-blown class action trials in this country. The conventional view was that any plaintiff who could achieve a certification order in a class action would shortly arrive at a settlement agreement in the case. Trials and verdicts? Like Sasquatch, they were more frequently cited than sighted.

In 2011, after undertaking a well-contested 45-day class action trial of our own, and with another of our class action matters scheduled for trial shortly thereafter, my colleagues (Sarah Graham, Genevieve Meisenheimer, Lauren Nielsen) and . . . [more]

It’s been a while since Slaw invited a law firm to blog with us for a week, but we’re happy to say that the firm of Harrison Pensa has agreed to help us break that fast. They’ll be joining our regular bloggers each day this coming week. Harrison Pensa LLP is a mid-size, full-service law firm headquartered in London, Ontario, with an office in Toronto. Known for its expertise in litigation and business law, Harrison Pensa also offers a strong consumer focus in family, wills and estate, and personal injury law.

Of course, you’ll recognized one member of the firm . . . [more]

Going by a variety of local names — British Columbia Day, Saskatchewan Day, Simcoe Day — the first Monday in August is a holiday in most of Canada. Folks in Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador don’t get a break, alas. And in Ontario, where I am, this isn’t a statutory holiday but, rather, a “civic holiday” that is up to municipalities to declare, seemingly all of which have done just that.

This is by way of saying that posting will be light today on Slaw. See you tomorrow, when regularly scheduled programming resumes. . . . [more]

A court in Massachusetts last month refused to dismiss a case brought by the National Association of the Deaf against Netflix, claiming that Netflix is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide closed-captioning on all its products, including streaming of broadcasts. Netflix was held to be a place of public accommodation within the meaning of the Act.

Does this strike you as a reasonable result? What would happen in Canada, under our various access statutes, one of the most extensive of which is the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act? Governments tend to have standards about . . . [more]

A recent US Court of Appeals decision has caused some concern in banking circles. Here is a blog description with a link to the case, Patco Construction v People’s Bank. Essentially the court held that the business customer’s losses from online fraud had been caused by negligent security practices at the bank, so the bank was liable for them.

As the blog entry (by a noted electronic security expert) points out, while consumers have traditionally been protected in dealings with their banks (so the banks have devised a number of security measures to protect against loss), business clients have . . . [more]

Slaw is proud to announce the institution of a new group of columnists who will write on the topic of intellectual property. The IP group joins the eight groups currently writing on specific topics.

The IP group includes:

Paula Bremner – Sim, Lowman, Ashton & Mckay LLP – Paula specializes in pharmaceutical patent litigation and also has significant experience in trade-mark opposition matters.

Lorraine Fleck – Hoffer Adler LLP – Lorraine is a lawyer and registered trade-mark agent and she founded and maintains her own blog, IP Address Blog which publishes Canadian intellectual property and technology law news and commentary. . . . [more]

There has been a bit of discussion on a couple of Canadian lists lately of the appropriateness of commissioning an affidavit (or declaration or affirmation) by video link or by Skype (which is just another form of video, at least for the purposes of this question, is it not?).

Ontario law, and most other Canadian common law at least, requires that the person making the affidavit must be “in the presence of” the person commissioning it (notary, lawyer, commissioner for taking affidavits). See Commissioner for Taking Affidavits Act (Ontario) s. 9.

Question: Is one sufficiently “in the presence” of . . . [more]

Slaw is pleased to announce that Matt Maurer is joining us as a blogger. Matt (otherwise Matthew P.) is a Queen’s law grad, was called in 2007, and is now an associate in the Minden Gross LLP litigation department, regularly appearing before various courts and tribunals in Ontario.

Welcome to Slaw, Matt. . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada has refused leave to appeal the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Tucows.com v Lojas Renner 2011 ONCA 548

That decision had held that Tucows.com could bring an action for a declaration of its rights to a domain name in an Ontario court, on the ground that the dispute involved “real or personal property located in Ontario”. In this case, Tucows.com was the registrar and the owner of the domain name Renner. com. The other party was a Brazilian company that owned the trade mark ‘Renner’ (though not apparently in Canada.)

The Court . . . [more]