I was in an interesting discussion today with colleagues on whether there has been a proliferation of the citation of unreported judgments in judicial decisions in Canada and whether this was a good or bad thing.

The context is this: in the good old days of print case law reporters (e.g., Dominion Law Reports or Ontario Reports) when life was much simpler, qualified editors chose to publish only the significant or important decisions. As such, you knew that when lawyers and judges cited precedent to print case law reporters there was some semblance of authority or quality in the precedent. . . . [more]

On June 22, 2009, Canada’s federal government announced that a team led by the chair of the B.C. Securities Commission, Doug Hyndman, will lead the transition to a new national securities regulator. Mr. Hyndman will be responsible for negotiating with the provinces—each of which currently has its own securities regulator—as well as developing the legislation that outlines the new national regulator’s mandate. A report is due in a year, with an implementation target of three years.

Goodness knows, this is long overdue. In the absence of a single national securities regulator, efforts have been underway for many years to harmonize . . . [more]

Neither civil libertarians nor privacy advocates are likely to be pleased with the two Bills introduced last week by Canada’s federal government, Bills which are intended to give police wider powers to access online data without a warrant. If passed, the Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act (Bill C-47) will require Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and other “telecommunications service providers” to install equipment facilitating the interception of communications, and to allow police access, without a warrant, to the personal information of users including names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and internet protocol addresses. The Investigative Powers . . . [more]

Slaw has discussed a couple of times [* *] whether domain names are property of any kind, including property that can be seized to satisfy creditors. The California Court of Appeal — Palacio del Mar Homeowners Assn., Inc. v. McMahon, Cal.Rptr.3d 2009 WL 1668294 (Cal. App. 4 Dist. June 16, 2009) [PDF] — has recently decided the latter question in the negative: no seizure. (Internet Cases has a summary.)

Part of the issue was whether the domain name was property that could be ‘levied upon by taking it into custody.’ If that’s the test then lots . . . [more]

I’m a big believer in the idea of a solar panel on every rooftop. It just makes sense to me. I would also like to experience an electric car traffic jam, and to have the power of the ocean used to light my home. Some may say I live in a dream world. Maybe now I do, but our world is changing—and in British Columbia my dream has a chance to become reality, thanks to the provincial government’s commitment to renewable energy. 

Premier Gordon Campbell proclaimed on April 23, 2009 that “We are going to be the alternative energy . . . [more]

The world wide economic downturn is prompting companies to sell non-core business units, consolidate operations and generally downsize. Lately, everyone seems to have at least one article devoted to some aspect of restructuring a business—see, for example, the cover story in the June 2009 edition of LEXPERT magazine.

Despite the fact that restructuring initiatives often have a profound impact on employees, few articles are talking about the human resources implications of restructuring a business. Employees have valuable know-how, technical knowledge, and relationships with customers, so their departure or disaffection can have significant and unintended financial consequences for a company.

CNET . . . [more]

Despite all the warnings about using privacy settings we’ve been hearing about, here comes a stark revelation: your Facebook account can be hacked anyway.

FBHive, a new blog all about Facebook, premiered today with a revelation that they can access certain profile information, even if the user has made it private.

Robin Wauters of TechCrunch confirmed that they were indeed able to access his private information.

FBHive claim that it has taken over 15 days for Facebook to fix they security hole. And they promise to give their secrets on how they do it within the next few days. . . . [more]

The “me” generation was out in full force in the world of biotech this week:

General Electric offered $100 million of loans as part of its healthymagination program, which is bound to — not coincidentally — boost sales of GE’s medical records systems. Good press and good sales. Good job!

In the U.S. Senate, a new version of the Comparative Effectiveness bill tries to allay Republican concerns by focusing more on the individual patient … leading comparative effectiveness right to the doorstep of personalized medicine.

In Wisconsin and Jerusalem, everyone was vying to divy up the biotech pie . . . [more]

The Justice Reporter [PDF] is a fairly new online publication that focuses on issues affecting journalism and the law, conceived and edited by Tracey Tyler, legal affairs reporter at the Toronto Star, and Tony Wong, a litigation partner at Blakes specializing in media law. The editors say in the first edition [PDF] that they aim to

catalogue these problems [i.e. problems with free reporting] and change policies that thwart the media’s ability to inform the public about its justice system.

The current edition leads with an article by three Ontario Court of Appeal judges, Russell Juriansz, James MacPherson and . . . [more]

Having spent two of the last three weekends in Las Vegas and San Francisco, I got to thinking about cross-border legal issues. I know that’s pathetic, but bear with me.

British Columbia is one of several provinces with reciprocating jurisdictions in the US for the enforcement of judgments. (In BC, this arises pursuant to Part II of the Court Order Enforcement Act, RSBC 1996, c.78). Rather than commence a new action on the foreign judgment, a judgment from a reciprocating jurisdiction can be registered in BC, and it becomes enforceable as if it was a BC judgment. This is . . . [more]

Surprise, surprise. Canada, with its stable equity market and a sound economic policy framework, was able to withstand some of the global credit market issues and moved to first place in the Milken Institute’s 2008 Capital Access Index.

The Index looks at such factors as macroeconomic environments, financial and banking institutions, the development of the equity and bond markets, and alternative capital sources. Because a firm’s access to capital allows it to implement innovative ideas and contribute to technological advancement, job creation and quality of life, the index is a tool for measuring how countries can act to reduce . . . [more]

The World Conference on Disaster Management (@WCDM) started today in Toronto, with a heavy emphasis on social media. I attended the afternoon workshop sessions Boyd Neil (@BoydNeil) and Jane Shapiro of Hill & Knowlton on Best Practices in Crisis Communications.

The session started by stating that lawyers and accountants will almost always interfere with best practices in a crisis by wanting to wait before speaking to the public. They typically want to collect all of the information to assess liability and costs to the company before deciding on a course of action.

I’ve said before . . . [more]