Yesterday, May 25, 2010 Sack Goldblatt launched a class proceeding against Thomson Reuters Corporation and Thomson Reuters Canada Limited on behalf of a class of Canadian lawyers and law firms. The Statement of Claim claims that Thomson Reuters breaches copyright by making available original lawyer created legal documents for fee or subscription without permission from, or compensation to, the authors of the documents.

The representative plaintiff is Lorne Waldman, a leading immigration and refugee lawyer, whose work for Maher Arar has allegedly been copied by Thomson Reuters through its “Litigator” service. Litigator is a fee and subscription-based database for lawyer-created . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada released R. v. S.G.T. today, a criminal law case where the accused in a sexual assault of a minor had sent an e-mail to the mother of the alleged victim. Although the mother had contacted the police at one time, she had failed to follow through. It was only when the accused independently reported the complaints to a high-school counselor that the charges were laid.

The case centered on credibility, and whereas the Crown claimed the e-mail was in response to the charges, the accused claimed that it was in connection with an unrelated event. . . . [more]

Today’s a day that Phil Anisman must have wondered whether he would see. Back in 1979, he published Proposals for a securities market law for Canada.

A national Securities Bill unveiled, a Canadian Securities Regulatory Authority established and the scheme instantly referred to the Supreme Court of Canada.

As the preamble says:

1. capital markets affect the well-being and prosperity of all Canadians;
2. capital markets are increasingly national and international in scope;
3. capital markets are rapidly evolving and include increasingly complex financial products and methods of distribution and trading;
4. it is important for Canada to have competitive capital markets and

. . . [more]

On Tuesday, May 25, the Minister of Industry introduced in Parliament Bill C29, also known as an Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Bill C-29 is the long-awaited government response to the five year mandatory review of PIPEDA and contains a number of very significant amendments that, if passed, will alter the landscape of privacy law compliance in Canada. At a very high level, it provides mandatory breach notification for security breaches related to personal information, attempts to clarify the confusing “lawful authority” provisions in Section 7 and also facilitates the disclosure of customer . . . [more]

The Canadian government introduced two important new bills yesterday. Bill C-29 amends PIPEDA – I’ll leave commentary on that to David Fraser.

Bill C-28 is the “Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act” or FISA. It is essentially the same as the “Electronic Commerce Protection Act” that was proposed previously. Here is Industry Canada’s news release, and the bill itself.

It targets the sending of what we would typically call spam, or unwanted commercial email, as well as spyware and phishing.

From the news release:

The proposed FISA is intended to deter the most damaging and deceptive forms of . . . [more]

Today’s announcement by the Crown Attorney’s office in Ontario that charges have been stayed against the former Attorney General Michael Bryant is accompanied by an 11 page analysis of the facts and the applicable law, that should be noted by those who follow the role of the Law Officers of the Crown and the discretion to stay charges.

This will add to the academic literature such as the works of John Edwards, The law officers of the Crown : a study of the offices of Attorney-General and Solicitor-General of England, and The Attorney General, Politics and the Public . . . [more]

Statistics Canada has released a difficult study, “Police-reported Crime in Inuit Nunangat” by Mathieu Charron, Christopher Penney and Sacha Senécal. Difficult because it shows us something about our country, our society, that we commonly prefer to ignore, and difficult too because the problem revealed is amenable to no easy solution.

The term Inuit Nunangat, I learn (I’m ashamed to say), refers collectively to the four settled regions at the top of Canada in which forty of the fifty thousand Inuit live. See the map below (click on it to enlarge it):

I should point out that, as the . . . [more]

and, in the IP world, maybe soon coming to Canada. But this message isn’t about the upcoming Canadian version of the US DMCA.

Instead, it’s about American ingenuity, the “if at first you don’t succeed motto” and Warner Bros. ongoing attempts to control as much as it can of the profit-making capacity of the Superman character. Read about it here. The caption of the article is “Warner Bros. So Distraught Over Losing Superman Rights, It Personally Sues The Lawyer Who Won”, subtitled “from the getting-a-bit-personal dept”. The background is that WB was recently forced to return some of . . . [more]

(And anybody else who cares to participate)

The assumption around here is that Slaw is the most widely read, or at least one of the most widely read law blogs, amongst lawyers (academic and practicing), judges, and others associated with the profession. I’m going to (try to) put that to the test.

As some of you know, my particular (legal) research interest is factual causation in tort, particularly negligence. I’ve described that interest, on occasion, as the search for the “f” in actual cause.

I pose this question for those of you involved in civil litigation.

Are you prepared to . . . [more]

After much stalling and anticipation Ontario has finally enacted a formal ignition interlock program designed to relieve some of the burden on our courts caused by massive amounts of impaired driving litigation.

Effective Aug. 3, 2010, persons convicted of a first impaired driving offence that does not cause bodily harm or death will be eligible for reduced licence suspensions if they comply with the regulations of the program — the primary requirement being the installation of an ignition interlock device (essentially a mini-breathalyzer machine attached to the ignition of your vehicle making it impossible to operate the car unless sobriety . . . [more]

defamation - no more symbolic damages in the era of proportionality?

SCC upholds Alberta courts in limitation periods in international arbitrations.