A recent Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench decided that an injured worker should have his case heard on its merit to determine if his medical marijuana should be paid for by workers’ compensation.

On Wednesday September 5, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg heard arguments from four workers challenging British judgments over the expressions of their religious faith in the workplace. Two are arguing for the right to wear a cross at work, while the others object to dealing with same sex couples.

A B.C. woman who won a personal exemption from Canada’s ban on doctor-assisted suicide will keep that right as the case makes its way through the province’s Appeal Court.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice just decided that although an employee was constructively dismissed when he was suddenly “laid off,” the employer did not owe the employee any damages because he failed to mitigate his loss.

A recent Ontario Court of Justice decision has declared that briefly handling your cellphone while behind the wheel should not get you a ticket under Ontario's Highway Traffic Act distracted driving provisions.

Our task [as lawyers] must be to understand factual causation as it actually is. We should not be looking for a heuristic model of factual causation that generates liability in accordance with our instinctive feelings, unconcerned whether the model is accurate or not. Simply, lawyers cannot say that C was the cause of E when it was not, or that C was not the cause of E when it was. To do so is, literally, to part company with reality. It is sometimes said that a philosopher is someone from whom a tragedy is a good theory destroyed by the

. . . [more]

On July 12, 2012, a two-to-one majority dismissed the appeal, upholding the ruling that Portsmouth diocese is liable to pay for alleged wrongdoings of its clergy. This ruling according to many legal experts paves the way for similar claims and far reaching implications.

For whatever this is worth, for those who need to care (or do, regardless of need).

These propositions are written for the Canadian lawyer whose knowledge of the relevant Canadian law is such that a Superior Court (or equivalent) judge would consider that lawyer competent to prosecute or defend an “ordinary” personal injury or property damage action. As such, they presume a certain level of knowledge.

Comments are on for a limited purpose. I will attempt to clarify any of these propositions if the manner in which I have stated the proposition is not sufficiently clear, bearing in mind what . . . [more]

Following our previous Slaw post, were we commented on the June 15 British Columbia Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Criminal Code ban on physician-assisted suicide. Without being surprised, on July 14, 2012, we learn that the federal government has decided to appeal that decision.

I believe that what I’ve written below is a good enough summary, for now, of what practitioners in Canada’s common law jurisdictions need to know about the effect of  Clements v Clements, 2012 SCC 32 on the manner in which causation is to be proved in negligence actions. (For those who don’t know, Quebec is a civil law jurisdiction; all others are common law.)

These propositions are written for the Canadian lawyer whose knowledge of the relevant Canadian law is such that a Superior Court (or equivalent) judge would consider that lawyer competent to prosecute or defend an “ordinary” personal . . . [more]

On May 22 the B.C. Supreme Court issued an interesting ruling in Vilardell v. Dunham, 2012 BCSC 748, an application that arose out of a family law proceeding. The plaintiff had sought to be relieved of hearing fees, or fees for the use of the courtroom. It is important to note the fees in question were as existed under a version of the Supreme Court Rules that was repealed and replaced in 2009; hearing fees continue to exist (at least to the point of yesterday’s ruling) but are reduced.

The Courthouse Libraries BC prepared an excellent and short . . . [more]

Those following the US antitrust litigation against Apple and five of the big publishers in respect of ebook pricing by now will have seen Judge Cote’s decision to deny the defendants’ motion to dismiss the class action suit by consumers. The Opinion & Order, In Re Electronic Books Antitrust Litigation 11 MD 2293 (DLC) makes for quite interesting reading. I read a PDF of the Opinion last night, and the Opinion’s also been uploaded to Scribd.

It’s been a long while since I’ve read one of these, but it’s evident from the Opinion that Judge Cote had no difficulty . . . [more]