What is the duty of a real estate agent to verify the information provided by the vendor of the property to prospective purchasers?

In this space I frequently moan about the danger of mediation stemming the flow of judicial precedent, but here is a nice legal question answered by the Court of Appeal for Ontario this month.

The property was a residential home with significant structural and plumbing problems.

The agent, who acted for both the purchaser and the vendor, became the meat in the sandwich.

The purchaser sued the agent for failing to advise the purchaser to obtain professional . . . [more]

Quite a few of us who write for and read Slaw appreciate the important role that libraries play in our society. I feel comfortable, then, in inviting you to donate to the fund for the Slave Lake Library, which was utterly destroyed by the recent forest fire that devastated much of the area. The burning of a library is always a sad thing, but this was perhaps more poignant than most because the library was newly built as of 2010.

According to a communication from Louise Hamel, Manager of the Ontario Judges’ Library, money donations can be made via the . . . [more]

An unconference is a participatory style gathering where attendees contribute as much to the content of the event, or more, as the organizers. They’re frequently used in the technology and computer industries (i.e. “geeks”) to foster innovation, creativity and collaboration.

Unconferences though are relatively scarce in the legal community, probably due to an aversion of many to unstructured environments subject to constant change and revision. But this is also exactly what makes Law Tech Camp so fascinating.

A number of Toronto-area legal bloggers have decided to spontaneously launch a Bar-Camp style unconference on June 18, 2011 at the University of . . . [more]

Currently Universities and Colleges across Canada are spending hundreds of man-and-woman hours pulling together a list of copy machines, computers, scanners, etc., at the whim of Access Canada Copyright (got the name wrong throughout this post, initially), the agency created, and then named in high irony, to restrict the educational use of materials, to pursue an obsolete model of protecting the interests of creators, and to funnel the resulting funds into pockets unknown. At least, that’s what you might think their mandate was if you judged by their actions. For their self-image, see their About Us page.

Backed . . . [more]

I’d like to introduce a new website geared toward solo practitioners. Small Firm Innovation is still in soft-launch mode, and you’ll notice a few gaps as you navigate through the website; but early indications are that this website will capture some interesting solo perspectives. And as you’ll see below, a little CanCon to boot.

But first the disclaimers. Fellow Slaw-contributor Jack Newton and his community sherpa Gwynne Monahan at Clio are the guiding forces behind the website. In our Stem roles, colleague Jordan Furlong and myself will also be contributing, as will a host of other recognizable names.

Now . . . [more]

On Slaw we’ve pointed you to TED videos from time to time, and quite rightly: TED is a cornucopia of stimulating ideas. But here in Ontario we’ve got an online collection of thought-provoking videos that are equally worth your time. TVO offers up fifty or so excerpts from the last couple of years of its programming under the title of Big Ideas. Herewith a more or less random selection of these videos, just to give you an idea of what’s in store, if you’re shopping:

• Sara Seager on Exoplanets the Search for Habitable Worlds
• Simon Winchester on Joseph Needham,

. . . [more]

As service provider’s counsel, I watched it happen many times. After the Service Provider worked diligently to prepare a response to a Customer RFP and was down-selected based on the Service Provider’s proposed solution, the scope of services was reduced. The reasons varied. Sometimes they were financial: the Customer was not able to afford particular aspects of the solution or the benefits arising from parts of the solution no longer justified the expense. In other cases the reasons were operational or delivery-based: the Customer lacked the necessary infrastructure to implement components of the solution or it would have taken the . . . [more]

Following up on Dave Bilinsky’s post earlier this month, the BC distance family mediation project at Mediate BC has launched a new blog.

Located at distancemediation.ca, Susanna Jani’s goal is to provide more insights surrounding the project, and (of interest to me) reflections on how different technologies can support the families and mediators when they aren’t in the same room. As the project moves forward, regardless of whether one’s interests are in the area of mediation or technology, the insights provided should prove interesting to Slaw readers. . . . [more]

While the punishment appears for the moment to have been postponed, there is another horrible, barbarous story out of Iran. This time it’s not the stoning of a woman but the deliberate blinding of a man. He is alleged to have blinded a woman by throwing acid in her face when she spurned his advances. A Iranian court has now decided to order that he be blinded in return.

While there was a (justified) international outcry over the threat that a woman would be stoned, there has been none—at least that I’m aware of—over this latest barbarity. The man should, . . . [more]

On May 11, 2011, Manitoba proposed Canada’s first adult abuse registry as well as tough new offences and penalties to better protect adults with intellectual disabilities. The registry would make the names of those who abuse or neglect vulnerable adults under any Act available to employers for screening potential employees or volunteers. Similar registries already exist in the United States.

The Law via the Internet 2011 International Conference will be held at the University of Hong Kong on June 9 and 10. This will be the eleventh international gathering of promoters of free access and innovation in legal publishing.

This year’s meeting will give a new opportunity to assess if Free Access to Law is here to stay? The published program seems to reveal expansion. No one can say for sure about the long term sustainability of free access, but after 20 years the number of countries where the approach is used continues to increase. The growth is especially important . . . [more]

PBS has a new 13 minute video called High Fiber that looks at broadband in the Netherlands and Britain, and compares it to the US. The differences are striking. 

In Canada, we have controversies over usage based billing, and the costs of both basic internet services and fees for going over the monthly limit. And various surveys put us on a downward path in international rankings for various broadband metrics. This recent OECD survey, for example. 

The video shows that in the Netherlands and Britain more fiber is being installed (including to the home), competition is increasing, speeds are . . . [more]