We sometimes hear of bizarre laws still on the books. I had always assumed these were tucked away in obscure legislation and never applied. Not so, as many very surprising laws are contained in documents such as the Canadian Criminal Code. Here are some of the most surprising ones.

Those of us who have studied the Criminal Code know how complex it can be. What we may not have noticed is that it contains sections which appear to date from another time and place. This cannot be a product of the Code not having been amended in a while, . . . [more]

Part 1: The failure of the Law Reform Commission of Canada’s Evidence Code

For decades experts in the law of evidence have called for comprehensive legislative reform of the law of evidence in Canada, but it hasn’t happened. The great success of the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence (the FRE), operative from July 1, 1975 (but from Dec. 1, 2011, known as the Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence), makes Canada’s failure to enact a true code of evidence a considerable loss to its administration of justice. Almost all U.S. states have adopted the FRE as their state codes of . . . [more]

On December 23, 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered an important decision on copyright infringement in Cinar Corp. v. Robinson. The Court affirmed the trial judge’s finding that Cinar infringed Claude Robinson’s intellectual property and allowed a considerable increase in the monetary relief the Quebec Court of Appeal awarded Robinson.

Two articles I noticed this morning emphasize that while social media can bring its own set of legal issues, sometimes its use can have the same consequences as any other form of publication.

The first is a CBC news report that a man has been charged with criminal harassment for his tweets. He was charged a couple of years ago for derogatory and threatening messages. The case is now at trial.

The second is a post at ipblog.ca about a decision regarding an employment non-competition clause. It was alleged that the defendant had contacted customers in violation of confidentiality obligations. . . . [more]

Letters of reference can be very helpful when looking for employment. However, increasingly, due to issues with liability (great letter for an employee who turns out to be terrible), management and consistency, many employers have policies that prohibit formal reference letters for all departing employees – regardless of their performance.

In most of Canada, it doesn’t appear that there is any recognized common law duty to provide a letter of reference. However, the Court of Appeal of Quebec (QCA) has recently ruled that Quebec is also a distinct society when it comes to letters of reference.

In Arseneault (Succession de) . . . [more]

Utah makes family law, it seems. Perhaps because that state is the home of a large number of devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a.k.a. Mormons, and churches of all stripes care about such things as marriage — and sometimes hold beliefs about them that are at odds with those of civil society. Recently, as you may know from the news, a couple of cases from Utah have shaken things up and have raised some fundamental questions — again.

In Brown et al. v. Buhman the plaintiffs, members of a polygamous (polygynous, specifically) clan, . . . [more]

The urge to mark, to record, to make art, is a very powerful one in us human beings. We doodle fanciful images on napkins, we write notes to ourselves on bathroom mirrors, we tell the owners of dirty cars to “clean me” — and we draw on flesh. The mix of human tissue and art can lead to legal problems of a somewhat unusual nature. There’s the whole matter of permission, the base position being “no art on — or in — me, without my say-so”. Which some surgeons, it seems, have trouble respecting, like the gynaecologist who burned “ingrid” . . . [more]

The Court of Appeal for British Columbia released a scathing judgment in Mide-Wilson v. Hungerford Tomyn Lawrenson and Nichols on New Year’s eve, upholding a Supreme Court decision earlier in the year which had reduced legal fees in a contingency arrangement from nearly $17 million to $5 million, in the interest of maintaining the integrity of the legal profession. The decision has implications for the understanding and application of contingency fee arrangements, which should be reviewed for contingency lawyers when evaluating the monetary worth of work in progress on their files.

The matter dealt with the million dollar estate of . . . [more]

I don’t often write about court decisions. As a law librarian and not a lawyer, I try to leave this to the legal experts of Slaw. Sometimes, though, I feel compelled to point out specific decisions from the Alberta Courts.

Since it is New Year’s Eve, this day of frequent imbibing, I draw your attention to a relatively recent decision from Alberta Provincial Court Judge Bart Rosborough: R. v. Omeasoo, 2013 ABPC 328 (CanLII). In this decision, Judge Rosborough writes about bail conditions frequently imposed on alcoholics – refraining from consuming that which they are addicted to. Paula . . . [more]

At the end of November, Creative Commons announced the release of an updated set of copyright licenses, dubbed version 4.0. The aim, as it has been since the start of the Creative Commons movement, is to let producers and owners of content make that content legally available for re-use by others with no conditions or some few conditions attached, depending upon the particular license chosen.

Version 4.0 contains a number of important improvements. It has greatly improved the usefulness of CC licenses around the world by taking many countries’ copyright and other laws into account. As well, the . . . [more]

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a new hearing this past Friday in Joffe v. Google, Inc., while affirming the decision in September that denied a motion to dismiss by Google.

Google had requested the class action be dismissed on the basis that their actions in collecting information for Google Street View was not illegal due to an exemption in the Wiretap Act, on the basis that they transmitted the data over a WiFi network. The Street View vans had used the service set identifier names and media access control address from routers . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada has released its decision in Attorney General of Canada, et al. v. Terri Jean Bedford, et al., the case involving prostitution that has been before Ontario courts eight times. In a 9-0 judgment delivered by the Chief Justice the Court dismissed the appeal by the Attorney-General and allowed the cross-appeal by Terri Bedford.

From the headnote:

Held: The appeals should be dismissed and the cross‑appeal allowed. Sections 210, 212(1)(j) and 213(1)(c) of the Criminal Code are declared to be inconsistent with the Charter. The declaration of invalidity should be suspended for one year.

. . . [more]