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]

This is the time of year when different people and organizations compile their top ten events/stories of the year about to end or list their top ten issues to watch/predictions for the year to come.

The following top ten list caught my attention today. I saw it on a feed of stories sent out by Amnesty International.

The London-based Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) has published its Top 10 List of Business and Human Rights Issues for 2013:

“Just 18 months after the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, significant progress has

. . . [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.

Wikipedia’s article of the day on its main page today is a reference ot the House of Lords decision in Pepper v Hart. The case established the ability of English courts to use legislative history in interpreting unclear provisions of legislation. The full article goes into some detail about why the history had not been available before (parliamentary privilege under the 1689 Bill of Rights – the courts must not criticize Parliament) and why it might be a bad idea now (it would be too much work for lawyers giving advice or drafting to have to wade through Hansard . . . [more]

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]

Search engine rankings are largely the result of mathematical algorithms and repetitive bots which crawl the Internet. Search engines have historically enjoyed considerable immunity from defamation and libel claims, given that they present themselves as automated organizers of information and not publishers of the information itself. That may change soon, especially where the statements are false and the plaintiff contacts the search engine requesting that the results be modified or removed.

The Supreme Court of Victoria in Australia has ordered Google and Yahoo to pay damages for failing to modify their search results. Michael Trkulja, a prominent member of the . . . [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]

Two privacy stories raise interesting issues.

1. Journalistic violation of privacy: PIPEDA s. 7(1)(c) gives an exemption from the rules about collection of personal information for journalistic purposes.

Section 32 of the Data Protection Act (UK), by contrast, provides a journalism exception only if, in addition,

(b) the data controller reasonably believes that, having regard in particular to the special importance of the public interest in freedom of expression, publication would be in the public interest, and

(c) the data controller reasonably believes that, in all the circumstances, compliance with [the provision being violated] is incompatible with the

. . . [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]