The Grievance Settlement Board’s March 28th privacy award made for some sensational headlines that decried the Ontario Ministry of Labour’s disregard for occupational health and safety inspector privacy by undertaking CPIC checks without consent. The headlines do not do justice to the difficult and significant issue dealt with in the award that relates to the MOL’s obligation to disclose information about inspectors pursuant to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. McNeil.

The Supreme Court issued McNeil in January 2009. The Court held that the Crown is not a single entity for the purposes of its prosecutorial . . . [more]

One hundred sixty years ago London invited the world to the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations held in the new and astonishing Crystal Palace. The Google Doodle for today commemorates this event, and, as is the case lately with these doodles, this graphic is interactive. Your cursor over the doodle becomes a magnifying glass, letting you see details with greater clarity — including a number of miniature animations.

The Crystal Palace, originally erected in Hyde Park, threw a glass roof over 990,000 square feet of space. The building was moved and altered considerably in . . . [more]

Sony responded today to the theft of data from Playstations in a press release today.

The breach earlier this month was one of the largest in history, and involved names, addresses, and potentially credit card information for up to 77 million users. Sony claims any credit card information would have been encrypted, limiting the use of the sensitive data to the hackers.

A number of governments are already inquiring into the breach, and there is talk of civil actions as well. Users were particularly upset that they were not informed of the breach immediately.

Sony thanked customers for their loyalty, . . . [more]

Earlier this month a certain Liam McHugh-Russell uploaded a functional Canadian Legal Style to Zotero’s style library here.

Look for the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 7th ed. (McGill Guide), Liam’s style handles secondary sources perfectly, as far as I can tell, and performs well for cases and legislation.

When I asked him about the style, he did note that, due to the variety of formats in which citations to cases and legislation are offered online, the style cannot guarantee seamless downloading of citations to primary resources.

That said, I was able to extract a citation from . . . [more]

In technology today, and especially on the web, there is a constant push for the new shiny thing. Lately it seems like that new shiny thing comes in two flavors: Voice Recognition and Video. In my (not-uncontroversial) opinion those are two of the most overrated technologies in the business right now.

Video

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Undoubtedly true, but honestly…don’t use a thousand words when 56 words will do. It seems like today every website is trying to video-enable itself and recently I even saw a pitch for video e-mail! That’s fine when the . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada released the much anticipated decision in Ontario (Attorney General) v. Fraser this morning.

The majority held that the Agricultural Employees Protection Act, 2002, (“AEPA”) which excluded agricultural workers from the Labour Relations Act (“LRA”) following Dunmore v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2001 SCC 94, [2001] 3 S.C.R. 1016 did not violate s. 2(d) of the Charter. . . . [more]

Here we are embedded in an election — some might say mired — that even with the surprise showing of the NDP can lead to saturnine moods. Today I offer an antidote to gloom, perhaps oddly by moving us very far away from the sun. I prefer to think of it as lifting our gaze to horizons so broad that they put the merely mundane firmly into perspective.

NASA provides an astronomy picture of the day, which alone should be enough to lift your spirits (and there’s always an accompanying scientific comment, for those who require instruction in order . . . [more]

I have spent the last few weeks preoccupied with making sure E exams here at Schulich Law proceed in an orderly fashion, and being grateful that I was spending my time on this side of the classroom, so to speak, as in not writing 100% finals. Law School pedagogy has been point of some conjecture here at Slaw in the past, but what I thought I would do this time is go old skool on this post and provide a bibliography of some of the literature that has been produced on the gauntlet that is the law school exam….what can . . . [more]

The Disney Institute speaker launched us into a fascinating 90-minute presentation that started with an invitation to take a drink from a high pressure water hose, took us “off stage”, and left us inspired.

The 2011 Legal Marketing Association conference was recently held in Florida’s Walt Disney World — a great venue to ignite a conference that centres on understanding and improving the client experience.

Our Disney Institute keynote speaker was as well-rehearsed as any Disney production, but with plenty of nuggets to take away and consider. Disney, as an organization, is a model to follow and learn from. Yes, . . . [more]

Following the first phase announcement of mandatory e-filing for certain BC land title documents that came on March 11th, Dye & Durham has developed and issued a new white paper discussing many of the issues to be faced by BC lawyers and notaries during the upcoming transition period.

The paper outlines the planning background behind the LTSA’s move toward mandatory e-filing, current usage rates of the EFS, training received by BC lawyers (only 4 in 10 surveyed), and the evolving digital role for BC Registry Agents.

As the author of the paper (and full disclosure, a client of ours), Dye . . . [more]

The Ontario Superior Court recently released a judgment about recovering domain names, South Simcoe Railway Heritage Corporation v. Wakeford 2011 ONSC 1234, in this case a .com name rather than .ca domain name.

Someone who had been active in a voluntary organization registered a domain name for the organization and later transferred it into his own name. He also changed all the registration information settings to private so no one, including the organization, could track who was responsible for the site.

The plaintiff organization brought actions in ‘detinue sur trover’ (a new cause of action for me after all . . . [more]

This Quebec-born boy still has trouble fathoming why so many people are going gaga over the English Royal Wedding. Don’t we all have hockey playoffs to think about? And isn’t there that little thing to do with the federal elections and Jack’s unexpected Big Orange Wave?

Never mind.

To help us out, the Harvard Law School Library has published a post on Royal Wedding: Pomp, Circumstance, and Law to explain all the legalities about how people in the British royal family get hitched.

Apparently, it is a lot more complicated than simply showing up at city hall, calling a florist . . . [more]