The European Court of Justice has issued a ruling in Case C‑442/09 Bablok et al v. Freistaat Bayern (Monsanto intervening) that might well cause difficulty for food producers and for Monsanto, the owner of patents to many genetically modified organisms used or sold in the food chain. The plaintiff, a beekeeper, sued the Bavarian state for compensation because pollen from a government owned test field of Monsanto’s GM corn (maize) found its way into his honey, polluting it.

The court agreed that the trace amounts of pollen from the Monsanto corn, even though the pollen was no longer alive or . . . [more]

Is the practice of law predominantly a business or a profession? The debate is an old one. When Governor General David Johnston spoke of the practice of law at the recent Canadian Legal Conference in Halifax, he described it as much more than a profit-driven business. He portrayed a noble profession with duties to the client, to justice and to the public interest. He saw a social contract as existing between lawyers and society:

“There are three principal elements to any profession’s social contract. First, the profession is characterized by specialized knowledge that is taught formally and obtained by experience . . . [more]

I would like to draw the attention of all Slawyers to an important conference being held at UWO next year. It is being organized by Jason Neyers and Stephen Pitel. From my past experience with conferences organized by UWO, I expect this one to provide very useful papers and discussion.

Sixth Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations: Challenging Orthodoxy
Hosted by The Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
July 17-20, 2012

The Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario is pleased to be hosting the Sixth Biennial Conference on the Law . . . [more]

1) Updates to law-related movies:

Thanks to law librarian Christina López at Pitblado LLP in Winnipeg for mentioning a 1931 movie directed by Fritz Lang called “M.”

I have added an entry for this movie to my list of law-related movies, which sort of makes a nice counterpart to the movie “Z,” earlier recommended by one of the Simons.

I haven’t seen the movie and I suspect it may be hard to rent (Christina mentioning she saw it years ago at a revival movie theatre in Montreal).

It tells the story of a child murderer in Germany and . . . [more]

A newly minted partner that I know, was hit with the realization that while she has a robust group of clients, she can no longer look to her firm to send her work as they did when she was an associate. Lisa knows that developing new business is now completely up to her. She also now has a responsibility to make sure that associates in her medium-sized firm are given sufficient work that they too are profitable.

When Lisa looks at her marketing plan, it includes all the right activities. She regularly contacts existing and old clients. She gives client . . . [more]

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke announced today that Bills will shortly be introduced in Parliament to overturn prohibitions on cameras in the courtroom.

The media will only be allowed to film judges’ summary remarks only – victims, witnesses, offenders and jurors cannot be filmed.

Filming and broadcasting in court is currently banned under two Acts of Parliament and new legislation will need to be passed to allow cameras into the courts.

The Guardian reports that Clarke had intended to consult with senior judges but in recent days Downing Street had moved to circumvent this consultation process and support the change, whatever . . . [more]

You know it is September when:

• The College and University crowd adds 15 minutes to your commute
• You hear yourself saying “put some protein in that lunch girls”
• Life suddenly resumes warp speed

September is proving to be interesting on the eBook front.

Sarah Glassmeyer posted to the Law Librarian Blog today about some free eBooks. These include Federal Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The books were compiled by the Legal Information Institute and made available through CALI‘s eLangdell Press.

There are interesting questions on a CanLII survey . . . [more]

A U.S. court has decided that a bank whose client lost money because someone hacked into its account and transferred funds out of it, was not liable to the client because the bank had used ‘commercially reasonable’ security. The case is described on the Goodwin Proctor website. The lengthy decision of the Judge Magistrate in Patco Construction v People’s Bank, later upheld, is available online. .

Is this the right standard of care for negligence? Does it matter that the bank is regulated strictly under the Bank Act? Does it matter that the U.S. bank could . . . [more]

If you’re interested in defamation law you’d do well to read the recently published piece by Bob Tarantino, “Chasing Reputation: The Argument for Differential Treatment of “Public Figures” in Canadian Defamation Law,” (2010) 48 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 595 [PDF]. The author, a partner at Heenan Blaikie and a blogger at their Entertainment and Media Law Signal argues for the:

recasting the tort of defamation into two different tracks: one for public figures, who pose the highest risk of abusing the tort, and one for private plaintiffs, whose reputational interest is akin to traditional notions of reputation.

This . . . [more]

I have this dream—a nightmare really—like one of those dreams where you’re trapped in an embarrassing or compromising position. In this dream, I walk into my law firm’s library and the shelves and books are gone. Instead, I see rows of keyboards and gleaming cathode ray tubes. The computers have staged a coup d’état.

Scott Stolley, The Corruption of Legal Research, For the Defense (Apr. 2004).

The promise and scope of Big Data is that within all that data lies the answer to just about everything.

Vivek Ranadivé, Chairman and CEO, Tibco, from Crunching Big Data: more than a

Happy belated Labour Day! With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it is good to review the labour standards applicable to statutory general holidays like Labour day and Thanksigiving day (which will fall on October 10, 2011 this year) for the province of Québec. I have no doubt that there are many Québec-based readers on Slaw.

Although many people actually benefit from a paid day off on these holidays, the Québec Act respecting Labour Standards explicitly sets out the conditions surrounding those payments and what happens when you’re required to work on a statutory holiday or how you’re paid if you’re . . . [more]

The number of law firms to engage in legal process outsourcing (LPO) is still relatively low but is growing. In a recent survey by Legal Week, 15% of law firms said they use LPO services, with half believing that number would grow over the next year.

But while law firms weigh up their options, numerous corporations (including some of the largest global corporations) have clearly moved ahead by entering into their own LPO arrangements.

UK construction giant Carillion, employing 50,000 staff and with an annual revenue of around £5bn, has entered into a relationship with a UK LPO provider to . . . [more]