The law student of 1594 passed Christmas revelling to The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare. We know this because of the Gesta Grayorum which was printed in 1688 from a much older manuscript. This text has been conveniently reproduced with an introduction on the Mr. Shakespeare blog.

We can also look forward to a 3 volume set, part of the Records of Early English Drama series, to be published in January 2011 by Boydell & Brewer: Inns of Court, edited by Alan H. Nelson and John R. Elliott, Jr. According to the publisher’s blurb:

The Introduction provides

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Think of it as a stocking. (How did socks become stockings — and not sockings, eh? Blame belongs to the Old English, it seems, whoever they were.) Yes, a Christmas stocking just crammed with little goodies, the sort of things to keep you occupied while the rest of us sleep in for just a little bit longer, which is what we’ll be doing here at Slaw for the next little while, I imagine. (The Christmas stocking thing didn’t begin as a distraction, it turns out, but rather as boots with gifts for Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir; Odin would . . . [more]

How many seasons have you watched “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”? “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”?, “Frosty the Snowman”? The answer being several. In that spirit, I present to you a re-re-Blog posting. In my defence I have attempted to update this post, but the cases that appear would likely not do much to uplift your holiday spirit. So, in the proper holiday spirit let’s see how Santa Claus has fared in Canadian Courts.

From: Santa in the Courts

Community Funding Corp. v. Newfoundland (Department of Government Services and Lands), 2004 NLTD 236, 243 NFLD & PEIR 255.

A very . . . [more]

Clements (Litigation Guardian of) v. Clements, 2010 BCCA 581 – right result, bad reasons.

A sub-text to the case is the manner in which the panel used a hot-off-the press article in a law review to explain and justify its analysis and conclusion, introducing and setting up the manner in which it intended to use the article this way:

[54] The question of when it will be appropriate to resort to the material-contribution test discussed in Resurfice Corp. has been the subject of some appellate consideration and considerable academic writing. In my view, the answer to this question

. . . [more]

The Ontario government this week made public the final report of an advisory panel on SLAPP suits (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation).

SLAPP suits typically take the form of abusive defamation lawsuits aimed at shutting down criticism by non-governmental organizations or citizen lobby groups. Targets of SLAPPs in various parts of North America have been local residents, neighbourhood associations, municipal governments, and peaceful protesters, who have been sued for acts such as reporting bylaw violations, speaking at municipal meetings or even just picketing and circulating petitions.

The panel recommends that Ontario adopt anti-SLAPP legislation to protect the freedom of the . . . [more]

The Office québécois de la langue française requires that all communications between the Commission de la Santé et de la Sécurité du Travail du Québec (CSST, Quebec’s workplace health and safety board) and employers, suppliers and partners take place in French only, to comply with the Charter of the French Language. However, if the head office of those parties is located outside Quebec, they may be served in English.

Morris Leo Cohen died on Saturday, December 18, 2010. He had recently celebrated his 83^rd birthday. More than a few of us call Morris mentor. During his years at Yale, Harvard, Penn and SUNY Buffalo, he attracted disciples with ease and grace. I trust that a round of tributes will follow his passing, but one aspect that may be neglected is the symbolic value of it for librarianship. Morris was the last great scholar bibliographer of his generation in American law librarianship. Not a scholar who stepped into the role of librarian, Morris was a scholarly bibliographer, a man . . . [more]

Bruce Carton at Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch has honoured Slaw by picking it as one of his “10 most watched” blogs of 2010. He’s got a video of them all, which just so happens to start with you-know-which blog. Click on the image below to go to his post and the video.

We are proud to be in the company of the following great blogs:

1. Consumerist
2. Jonathan Turley
3. Legal Juice
4. Legal Satyricon
5. Lowering the Bar
6. Simple Justice
7. Slaw.ca
8. SPAM Notes
9. Texas Lawyer
10. THR, Esq.

Many thanks, Bruce. . . . [more]

For a short moment, we had some innovative law firm marketing going on with Blakes flash mob dance! The Youtube video was here. That is until lawyers for the Black Eyed Peas called copyright foul. Youtube is now displaying the infringement image below:

I say boooo to the Black Eyed Peas and Will.I.Am. It’s tough enough to get lawyers to leave their offices and walk down a couple flights of stairs for a fire drill. Can you imagine getting close to 50 of them dance in the middle of a shopping mall? Unheard of.

Happy holidays! :) . . . [more]

This continues the comments on The Language of Law Reports. I couldn’t figure out how to put images in a comment.

The following croppings are from Chadwyck-Healey’s Early English Books Online, via ProQuest. First is the title page of the 1604 edition of volume 4 of Coke’s Reports:

Next is the top of page 91a, giving part of the record in Latin:

Next is the top of page 92b, the beginning of the report in French:

It’s still “en bank le Roy.” . . . [more]

Slaw readers might be interested in a recent judgement from the US District Court, in which two law professors, editors of a looseleaf service, sued the publisher for issuing a release under their names when they were not involved in its production. The release consisted of just 3 new case references and subscribers were charged $50 for it. Brief but briliant expert testimony on the nature of pocket parts was provided by a local law librarian to enlightened jurors, who awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. The verdict was reported in the Philadelphia Enquirer yesterday (Dec. 21) and has . . . [more]

As this is my last Slaw post before the holiday, I would like to wish Slaw readers (and of course all the Slaw contributors) a happy and safe holiday season. Please enjoy the card, which was created for our firm by a London artist (a higher resolution image is here), and the Harrison Pensa Christmas video.

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