The Court of Appeal for England and Wales has recently decided, in Flood v Times Newspapers Ltd [2010] EWCA Civ 804 that the ‘responsible journalism in the public interest’ defence to defamation requires that an online archive of a story must be updated to take account of exculpatory developments.

Since the Canadian version of that defence (‘public interest responsible communication’) expressly applies to blogs and other non-mainstream-media publications, will bloggers have to update their stories too? Will they have to go back and amend or annotate the original posting? Does the usual blogging software allow for that?

(In Flood, . . . [more]

In mid-June Irwin Law held a book launch to celebrate the publication of The Lunatic and the Lords by Hon. Richard Schneider. Justice Schneider, as some readers will be aware, presides over the mental health court at Old City Hall in Toronto. His book is an account of the 1843 trial of Daniel M’Naughten for the murder of Edward Drummond, secretary to Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. The verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity was so controversial that Queen Victoria ordered the House of Lords to review the verdict. The result of this review was the ‘M’Naughten Rules’ . . . [more]

Earlier today I stumbled across an excellent, free Investment Treaty Arbitration website at UVic Law that has so far appears to have gone unnoticed by SLAW.ca commentators.

According to the site, it provides access to all publicly available investment treaty awards along with information and resources relating to investment treaties and investment treaty arbitration and links to further resources.

Readers of the site are encouraged to send investment treaty materials and awards to Professor Andrew Newcombe for posting.

You can access awards chronologically or alphabetically by claimaint or by respondent state. Information is also provided for expert opinions and ICSID . . . [more]

When it all happens online, how can parties' ages be proved?

Susan Clairmont reports in today’s Hamilton Spectator that Mark Conacher, a Toronto JP holding G20 bail hearings, banned note-taking in his court “the other day”. Clairmont reports that, when challenged, Conacher qualified the ruling, saying “The ban doesn’t apply to the media.” According to Clairmont, Conacher offered no explanation and cited no law.

I haven’t been able to find Clairmont’s column on a free web-site, but it’s available on a suitable PressDisplay, LexisNexis or Factiva subscription. . . . [more]

The Canadian Charter tells us (s.24) that if we think our rights have been violated, we can apply for ‘such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.’ Does ‘just’ add anything to ‘appropriate’? Or is it, like ‘cease and desist’, only a bit of legal belt-and-braces?

Sometimes we do think of justice as mere propriety. For something to be unjust is for it to be out of kilter, morally speaking. On this way of looking at things, we can say that destroying the environment, abusing children, breaking promises, and torturing people are all unjust. They are . . . [more]

I received a sad note today from Courthouse Libraries BC. It was not unexpected, but I am still sorry to report that the two wonderful loose-leaf print publications that this venerable organization has laboured over for many years will cease June 30th, 2010. Farewell to BC Legislative Digest and the Canada Legislative Index.

These publications began in 1979 and 1980 respectively and have been wonderful sources. As the letter states “they grew out of a need for a timely method of tracking BC and federal legislative changes”. The CLI in particular (given my firm’s jurisdiction is not in BC) . . . [more]

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in the United States filed a petition against the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in federal court for an independent review of the airport body scanner program, and a motion for an emergency stay of said program.

“[5] I have reviewed the time spent which is 15.9 hours and frankly, I am surprised that so few hours are being claimed …. ” (2010 ONSC 3935).

A round of applause for the successful party’s lawyer, please.

In somewhat the same vein, put up a hand if you’re in favour of a new rule of lawyer’s professional conduct which states that lawyers acting for the winning side in a law suit are allowed to comment on the merits of the result for the media – print, electronic, and otherwise – only if the lawyers concede, on the record, that . . . [more]

A January article in Boing Boing talked about loose-leaf publications, marveling about their existence in the same way that the average marine biologist once marveled about the continuing existence of the coelacanth. I’m so used to having loose-leafs in a law firm library that I hadn’t considered that they might be considered a novelty elsewhere, but it started me wondering: are loose-leafs going to become the legal library equivalent of the coelacanth? Legal loose-leaf publishing has been around at least since 1915. These early loose-leaf services allowed legal publishers to produce up-to-date consolidations of legislation without having to reprint . . . [more]

♫ For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls…♫

Lyrics and Music by: Clifford Lee Burton; James Alan Hetfield; Lars Ulrich, recorded by: Metallica.

Microsoft has officially cut the life support on a number of products this week. Prominent among these products are:

Windows 2000/Windows ME (official date of death: July 13, 2010)

Windows XP SP2 (official date of death: also July 13, 2010)

Now to be fair, these products won’t stop working, however, Microsoft has stopped issuing any further support or patches or security upgrades.

Microsoft has stated:

Unsupported products

. . . [more]

Whether you are an Apple fan or not, the apparent flaw with the iPhone 4 external antenna gets interesting on many levels – including the tech itself, why it wasn’t found during pre-launch testing, Apple’s reaction, customer relations, and testing by various entities. 

It seems that if you hold the iPhone in a way that your hand touches a certain spot on the antenna that are on the edge of the phone, it causes signal loss, and degrades reception. Apple started out suggesting it was a software issue – but has since said that the fix is to hold the . . . [more]