Nothing says you can’t have a bit of a laugh on a Monday, right? So here’s something old and something new — and all of it borrowed, too.

Back in 1990, Ian Frazier did a brilliant take for the New Yorker on product liability law suits when he wrote a “claim” in the matter of:

Wile E. Coyote, Plaintiff
-v.-
Acme Company, Defendant
In The United States District Court, Southwestern District, Tempe, Arizona Case No. B19294, Judge Joan Kujava, Presiding

To give you a sense of the flavour of the claim, the dry unpacking of poor Wile E.’s . . . [more]

We talk a lot about accomplishing our various goals through time management, but as I get older I realize the key is less about fitting increasing amounts of work into the time we have and more about focus–switching focus completely from one task to another, maintaining that focus during any given work session, and maintaining focus over time. When I was younger my synapses fired oh so fast and I could easily switch back and forth between activities. Now I notice it is harder to move from talking to people to writing, move from research to analysis or move from . . . [more]

If the corporate veil distinguishes a corporation as a legal person separate from the shareholders in said corporation, what do you call it when an individual exists as an investment opportunity as an IPO like a company? The transfer of legal characteristics to corporations is multifaceted issue with positive and negatives that is subject to significant conjecture. In a bit of a flip of this action, a story from a few months ago caught my attention where the concept of transferring characteristics of a corporation to an individual was proposed.

In this particular case it involves a running back for . . . [more]

Devyani Khobragade’s counsel was refused an indictment extension today, with the result that the US issued the indictment alleging her visa fraud, something that both sides had been hoping to avoid by working out a settlement.

Ms Khobragade’s arrest and strip search by US marshals has caused outrage in India, and relations between the two countries are in danger of serious deterioration. She was arrested for having obtained a visa for an Indian servant by fraudulently promising to abide by US labour laws.

The Wall Street Journal has put the indictment online. It alleges a deliberate, calculated fraud, replete . . . [more]

The urge to mark, to record, to make art, is a very powerful one in us human beings. We doodle fanciful images on napkins, we write notes to ourselves on bathroom mirrors, we tell the owners of dirty cars to “clean me” — and we draw on flesh. The mix of human tissue and art can lead to legal problems of a somewhat unusual nature. There’s the whole matter of permission, the base position being “no art on — or in — me, without my say-so”. Which some surgeons, it seems, have trouble respecting, like the gynaecologist who burned “ingrid” . . . [more]

Back in 2012, at the end of the Stratford Festival’s season, the CBC arranged to have a mock appeal by Shylock of his conviction in Merchant of Venice, argued under current Canadian law and before an august court of lawyers and judges. Now the CBC’s Sunday Edition has released a 22 minute audio file of that hearing. Given Omar’s post today on the BCCA judgment about a fee arrangement, I thought this might be apt.

The five-person bench was stellar: Patricia Jackson, Justice Ian Binnie, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, Earl Cherniak, and Mayo Moran.

As were the counsel: Sheila . . . [more]

The ice storm passing through Central and Eastern Canada is making many of us give pause. Many people are hours–and possibly days–without power, and some (the horror) are without cell phone or Internet access. It makes us thankful for what we do have, and what we typically take for granted. I am seeing a lot of people pulling together to help one another.

What about those who have to go without on a longer term basis? How are we pulling together to help them?

In Toronto I am particularly seeing a lot of support for the Daily Bread Food Bank . . . [more]

Eighty-one years and ten days ago the Statute of Westminster 1931 was signed into law, UK legislation that came close to giving the Dominions, including Canada, complete independence. What was reserved to Britain was, by section 7, the power to amend the British North America Act, something that didn’t arrive on these shores until the repatriation of the constitution in 1982.

Avowedly to celebrate this demi-glorious moment, the federal government recently bestowed the designation of Queen’s Counsel on seven (to honour s.7?) lawyers in the public service. This, despite the fact that the federal government stopped designating Queen’s Counsel . . . [more]

[vocabulary watch: ‘bleg’ – a request (beg) for information delivered by blog]

Does anyone know of any instance where any body in Canada – private or public – asks that foreign public documents be legalized before being accepted for use here? (Legalization is a method of authenticating a foreign public document by consular officials of the country in which it is to be used. Public documents can include birth certificates and other personal status documents, school or unversity transcripts, and much else that is issued by a public authority of some kind.)

So far as I know, no one in . . . [more]

On November 27, 2013, the European Court of Human Rights held a Grand Chamber hearing (which was broadcast on the Internet) in the case of S.A.S v. France (Application no 43835/11). The case concerns a French Muslim woman’s complaint that French law prohibits her from wearing a full-face veil in public. As of April 2011, French Law no. 2010-1192 prohibits concealment of one’s face in all places open to the public in France. The penalty for breaking the law is a fine of up to €150 and/or compulsory citizenship classes. Separate penalties are provided for anyone forcing a woman to conceal her face in public.

There is a new blog post over at In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress in Washington, that discusses Christmas movies with a law-related theme.

Obviously, the post mentions Miracle on 34^th Street.

But check out the final paragraph that manages to connect the movie Gremlins to a discussion of The Restatement of Torts. . . . [more]

I recently had the privilege of attending the book launch of Roy McMurtry’s Memoirs and Reflections and it has stirred up many memories of my own.

Most people in the legal world will be aware of at least some aspects of McMurtry’s legal career extending over 50 plus years; litigation lawyer, Attorney General of Ontario, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Chief Justice of the Ontario Superior Court, and then Chief Justice of Ontario. But I have special memories of him from his years as Attorney General.

He was appointed Attorney General in September, 1975. In the spring of 1976, . . . [more]