Argument is taking place right now at the SCC regarding online defamation in hyperlinks. The Montreal Gazette has a nice overview of the matter to date

Live tweeting can be followed by searching for #Crookes on Twitter.

Who would have guessed a couple of years ago that someone could sit in the gallery at the SCC and let the world know what questions the court is asking. Here is a sample thanks to tweets by cippic:

#Crookes Q: Does defamation only arise once a hyperlinker has been given notice of the defamation? A: No.

Q: Knowledge converts something that

. . . [more]

The Washington Post carried a story on Tuesday about a Virginia man who was acquitted of a charge of failing to stop for a school bus that was unloading passengers. His lawyer made an argument, accepted by the court upon appeal, that the relevant section of the statute had been misdrafted, ever since it was changed in 1970, and was missing a critical “at,” rendering it meaningless.

Here’s the section in question:

A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or

. . . [more]

Today Justice Michael Kelen of the Federal Court handed down a significant decision in DONNA JODHAN v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA. Ms Jodhan sought a declaration under section 18.1 of the Federal Courts Act that the standards implemented by the federal government for providing visually impaired Canadians with access to government information and services on the Internet, and the way in which those standards are implemented, denied her equal access to government information and services, and thereby violated her rights under section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. . . . [more]

The Superior Court of Justice applied Grant v. Torstar in Vigna v. Levant, released on Thursday, where Giacamo Vigna, a lawyer for the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, sued Ezra Levant for allegedly defamatory postings on his blog.

Dan Michaluk said that Grant v. Torstar was the top information and privacy case for 2009, and Matthew Nied had already described how this could affect bloggers.

Facts

The facts are set out by the court as follows, . . . [more]

This year, Quebec’s highest court had to decide if common-law couples residing in Quebec were victims of discrimination based on section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. Quebec’s Civil Code does not afford common-law partners access to alimony, the sharing of family property and the protection of the family residence, among other rights that married or civil union couples enjoy (see sections 585, 401–430, 432, 433, 448–484 of the Code).

The Quebec Civil Code, which governs relations between private persons, treats common-law spouses as two independent individuals, regardless of the length of their union. It . . . [more]

The British Columbia Labour Relations Board recently upheld the firing of two employees by a car dealership over comments they posted on Facebook about their employer. The lawyer for the employer stated that he believes this is the first Facebook firing case to be heard in Canada.

Six Canadian provinces have legislative recognition of Remembrance Day, though only two mention Two Minutes Silence, Ontario and Alberta. Nova Scotia for example says:

Every employer carrying on or engaged in an industry to which Section 3 does not apply shall, subject to Section 8, relieve the employees in the industry from duty, and suspend the operations of the industry, for a period of three minutes, at one minute before eleven oclock in the forenoon.

This post is about silence, and the legal protection of silence.

You have the right to silence. And in Quebec, a judge cannot refuse . . . [more]

Today’s New York Times is reporting on a Federal labor relations board decision last week to proceed with a complaint against a Connecticut ambulance service, American Medical Response, that canned an emergency medical technician for breaching a company policy that bars employees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves.

This is the first case in which the US board has stepped in to argue that employees’ criticisms of their companies or bosses on a social networking site will be a protected activity and that employers would . . . [more]

In addition to our post last Monday, here is the video of what happened at Dalhousie Law School during the Wickwire Lectures.

Our thanks to Richard Devlin and his colleagues for making it available. Wickwire Lecture 2010

Be patient with it loading – it’s a 1350 MB beast of a file, which will load wonderfully on university broadband, but may be slow to load on the computers of mere mortals. . . . [more]

McCracken v. Canadian National Railway Company, 2010 ONSC 6026 (Ont SCJ) is necessary reading for any member of the legal profession with any (relevant) involvement in class actions. . . . [more]

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal recently ruled that newspaper editorials are not covered by section 1 and 13 of the Ontario’s Human Rights Code.

On October 28, 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada granted the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission leave to appeal the decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in the Whatcott case. In this appeal, the commission will be asking the Court for guidance on where the line should be drawn between extreme speech and the right of citizens to express their beliefs freely. You can read more on the case and topic in previous Slaw posts here and here.

A date for the hearing hasn’t yet been set.

In the meantime, the Saskatchewan government say they plan to introduce amendments . . . [more]