GTA Linux User’s Group, Political Outreach Group (David Collier-Brown, Editor)

Slaw readers may have noticed a flurry of interest around Voltage v. Doe and TekSavvy, an effort to get the courts to compel TekSavvy to identify 2000 households which Voltage Pictures argues are engaging in commercial copyright infringement via the “bit torrent” program.

Slaw has considered the subject of discovery of IP addresses recently in two posts: https://www.slaw.ca/2009/09/13/norwich-orders-applied-to-gmail-account/ and https://www.slaw.ca/2009/09/15/york-university-v-bell-canada-enterprises-observations-and-implications-for-future-norwich-jurisprudence/.

The technical community is following such cases with both interest and trepidation, as we expected suits against individuals to be rare, and limited to $100 to $5,000 . . . [more]

In my second post on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford in one day, the libel suit against him was just dismissed. Justice Macdonald concluded in Foulidis v. Ford,

[45] The plaintiff must prove four things on the balance of probability to prove a libel in this
case:

(1) That the defendant spoke the words in issue.
(2) That the defendant published the words in issue to one or more third parties.
(3) That the words in issue referred to the plaintiff.
(4) That the words in issue were defamatory of the plaintiff.

The plaintiff has proven the first two and

. . . [more]

No big surprise here, but the Federal Court decision of HomeAway.com, Inc. v. Hrdlicka  stated that:

[22] I find, therefore, that a trade-mark which appears on a computer screen website in Canada, regardless where the information may have originated from or be stored, constitutes for Trade-Marks Act purposes, use and advertising in Canada.

One of the issues was whether the appearance of the trade-mark on a website viewable in Canada that originated from the United States was “use” of that trade-mark in Canada. The site was for people wanting to rent homes, cottages or apartments for vacations, including some listed . . . [more]

and admissible evidence that some members of the bench read Slaw.

Livent. Inc. (Special Receiver) v. Deloitte & Touche, 2012 ONSC 7007 at para. 149.

I had almost nothing to do with this. . . . [more]

Anyone interested in medical malpractice litigation and the quagmire that is the current state of the Supreme Court of Canada’s jurisprudence on factual causation in negligence should listen to the the webcast of the appeal argument in Ediger v. Johnston, SCC case no. 34408, on appeal from 2011 BCCA 253 reversing 2009 BCSC 386. You should glance at the parties’ factums which are available on the SCC’s website or, at the miminum (if you’ve sufficient background) read the Registrar’s summary. If you don’t, you might get the wrong impression that the case is about only whether . . . [more]

On December 4, 2012, the Quebec Court of Appeal gave reason to the Quebec Ministry of Education regarding the Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) curriculum, which opposed them this time to Loyola High School, a private Catholic school. Loyola was asking to be exempted from teaching the curriculum set by the Ministry, and to substitute in its place the school’s own world religions and ethics course.

Last year around this time I posted top 10 lists of the most consulted cases for 2011 – one for all cases consulted in 2011 and the other for consultations of cases decided in 2011. It was well received so I have been looking forward to continuing the tradition. And as with last year, I leave it to the readers to determine the significance of any case appearing on either list.

Back in August I posted a column on Slaw about a Quebec administrative tribunal decision that referred to Facebook and Wikipedia evidence.

The tribunal, the Commission sur les lésions professionnelles (CLP), has returned to the social media admissibility question Campeau et Services alimentaires Delta Dailyfood Canada inc., 2012 QCCLP 7666 (CanLII).

A worker was injured and had to take a lot of time off work. At one point her injuries caused her a case of depression that also kept her off work. To test whether this was serious, the employer created a fictitious account on Facebook, giving the alleged . . . [more]

The OBA is running an early morning one hour program on Wednesday 12 December on the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision Southcott Estates Inc v. Toronto Catholic District School Board. This is the latest word on the law of mitigation in Canada. You can register to attend on-line or in person here.

The panel includes counsel who appeared in Ottawa for the appellant and respondent – Thomas Curry and Andrew Robinson.

The School Board sold surplus land to a corporation incorporated solely to purchase the land. The purchaser was a wholly owned subsidiary of a real estate developer. . . . [more]

MAY now do; for general causation in class actions, too.

see Bartram v. GlaxoSmithKline Inc., 2012 BCSC 1804 at para. 32:

[32] In an individual action, a plaintiff probably could not succeed by merely showing that the use of Paxil increased the risk of injury. In Clements v. Clements, , 2012 SCC 32, the Supreme Court of Canada re-affirmed the primacy of the “but for” test in proving causation and confined the alternate “material contribution” test to cases involving multiple negligent defendants where it is not possible to prove which one caused the injury. However, dicta in Clements

. . . [more]

The First Annual BAILII Lecture was given on 20 November by Lord Neuberger, the President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The event was hosted by the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP at their premises in Fleet Street , London.

BAILII stands for the British and Irish Legal Information Institute, which makes English jurisprudence and statutes available for free via the Internet. It is the equivalent of CanLII.

Entitled No judgment, no justice, the lecture focused on the importance of clearly written judgments and their wide dissemination:

1. Access to Judgments carries with it access to law

. . . [more]

The Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan just granted an injunction restraining a former employee from competing against his former employer, soliciting the employer’s clients, and using any of the employer’s confidential information he garnered while working with the employer.