Most of us outside Saskatchewan put our clocks back an hour yesterday, and we’ve now returned to what some might call “God’s time”. Of course, when it comes to the o’clock, it’s actually the law that disposes, and the law’s been setting our watches backwards and forwards for just over a hundred years. At the beginning of the last century, the English builder, William Willet, found a champion in Parliament to get his scheme passed for recapturing “some of the hours of wasted sunlight in the spring, summer, and autumn.”

Perhaps fearing that a jump of a full . . . [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]

Those who practice in the IT area have a lot of potential new law to digest. The Federal government has several bills in various stages that will affect many businesses and organizations, and all of us as consumers. These bills have been mentioned on Slaw, but I thought it was worthwhile listing them all in one place. 

Bill C-28 Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act.

This bill brings in several anti-spam measures. While this is welcome by most people, the language has the possibility to affect how typical businesses communicate. Things that we may not consider to be spam . . . [more]

I could have titled this post MORE Criminal Code amendments introduced. Between House of Commons Bills C-2 and C-52, 11 are related to the Criminal Code or its related legislation (youth justice, criminal records). November 1, 2010 saw the introduction of Bills C-51 (Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act) and C-52 (An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to support investigations). Bill C-46 from the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session 2009 was similar to Bill C-51, but died on the order paper with the end of the session.

There is an interesting Department of Justice Backgrounder on C-51. . . . [more]

If you’re summoned for jury duty in Florida keep your thoughts on your civic responsibilities and leave your personal electronics at home.

Many of you have cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices. Even though you have not yet been selected as a juror, there are some strict rules that you must follow about using your cell phones, electronic devices and computers. You must not use any device to search the Internet or to find out anything related to any cases in the courthouse.
Between now and when you have been discharged from jury duty by the judge, you

. . . [more]

Today’s posting comes (almost live) from the Schulich Law School at Dalhousie University where Richard Devlin and the organizing committee managed what many would have considered impossible – made legal ethics interesting and relevant to a student audience. Dalhousie staged a lively well fought and provocative debate about the hottest current issue in professional ethics in Canada, the issue of Conflicts of Interest.

We at Slaw have had postings on the CBA Task Force Report on Conflicts of Interest and the Federation of Law Societies response.

Today’s Wickwire Lecture – named after F.R. Wickwire, a leading member of the . . . [more]

Most Slaw readers will have read from one source or another that a New York trial court has ruled that a child still four years of age can be sued for negligence. The child defendant was riding a bike with training wheels when she and her friend ran into an old woman, knocking her down; the fall broke the woman’s hip. (The woman died three months later of unrelated causes.) The story in the New York Times provides the basic facts.

The judgment, Menach v Breitman, is available as a photocopied image in PDF. I’ve OCR’d that judgment . . . [more]

Last week, the Working Group 7 of The Sedona Conference – “Sedona Canada” – issued a public comment draft of “The Sedona Canada Commentary on Proportionality in Electronic Disclosure & Discovery.”

As explained by Justice Colin Campbell in his Foreword, proportionality is not a new concept in civil procedure, but has become a critical practical imperative and conceptual ideal given the impact of electronically stored information on litigation. He says, “Civil litigation simply becomes cost-prohibitive and burdensome without early and careful attention to identifying key sources of potentially relevant data and ensuring that only potentially relevant and unique data is . . . [more]

Last week I covered the litigation from the Adscam controversy relating to journalistic privilege in Globe and Mail v. Canada. This week, the Federal Court released Canada (Attorney General) v. Chrétien relating to the Gomery Inquiry (pdf), the Royal Commission charged under the Inquiries Act with investigating the scandal.

From the outset, the inquiry was burdened with charges of bias and conflicts of interest. Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien then sought judicial review of the inquiry of the Commission’s findings, which quashed the findings. The current appeal was an attempt to overturn this decision to quash . . . [more]

Is anybody – any international body – studying the legal basis for jurisdiction over personal information as it crosses national borders, or considering the law that should be applicable to such PI?

This could be thought of as ‘law applicable to the cloud’ in these days of cloud computing, though I don’t think it’s limited to that.

The Hague Conference on Private International Law in April 2010 noted [PDF p.18] as an ‘additional subject’ for work, more I think in the lines of a watching brief:

The Council invited the Permanent Bureau to continue to follow developments in the following

. . . [more]