Is a technophobe litigator who fails to take advantage of courtroom technology negligent? Can a litigator’s failure to use courtroom technology amount to negligent breach of duty when the case fails?

Why not?

We expect professionals to be aware of, and use, the most modern of methods. We most certainly demand this of doctors.

Imagine an old heart surgeon refusing to use current technology, preferring to launch into open heart surgery the way it was done in the ‘old days’. The doctor might rationalize it this way, “well it was good enough to operate on hearts without modern technology in . . . [more]

On 12 May 2010, a bill to organise the exploitation of orphan visual works was submitted to the French Parliament.

This timing coincides well with tomorrow’s copyright conference at U of T (see Simon Fodden’s earlier posting of today) where the afternoon panellists will discuss orphan works and mass digitization. . . . [more]

Yesterday, May 25, 2010 Sack Goldblatt launched a class proceeding against Thomson Reuters Corporation and Thomson Reuters Canada Limited on behalf of a class of Canadian lawyers and law firms. The Statement of Claim claims that Thomson Reuters breaches copyright by making available original lawyer created legal documents for fee or subscription without permission from, or compensation to, the authors of the documents.

The representative plaintiff is Lorne Waldman, a leading immigration and refugee lawyer, whose work for Maher Arar has allegedly been copied by Thomson Reuters through its “Litigator” service. Litigator is a fee and subscription-based database for lawyer-created . . . [more]

The Canadian Centre for International Justice is hosting a conference next month focusing on international criminal law in Ottawa and Toronto, with further locations at a future date.

The website describes the program:

Over two days, participants will receive a comprehensive overview of legal processes through which individuals can be held criminally and civilly accountable in Canada and abroad for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and torture. Lawyers, journalists, students, civil servants, NGO representatives and other professionals with an interest in international justice, human rights, international law, criminal law or torts are encouraged to attend.

Details below. . . . [more]

The Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law is holding a one-day conference tomorrow, May 28, on “The Google Book Search Project and Canada: Cross-Border Legal Perspectives.” Registration begins at 8 a.m. at Bennett Lecture Hall, Flavelle House, 78 Queen’s Park, Toronto. If you are unable to attend in person, you can join the conference via a live webcast. The event is free of charge but conference organizers ask that you register on line.

The conference program is available via the link to the conference above. . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada released R. v. S.G.T. today, a criminal law case where the accused in a sexual assault of a minor had sent an e-mail to the mother of the alleged victim. Although the mother had contacted the police at one time, she had failed to follow through. It was only when the accused independently reported the complaints to a high-school counselor that the charges were laid.

The case centered on credibility, and whereas the Crown claimed the e-mail was in response to the charges, the accused claimed that it was in connection with an unrelated event. . . . [more]

Many of you will likely have picked up the news yesterday of the cross-Atlantic merger between Sonnenschein and UK-based Denton Wilde Sapte. One element of the media push I found interesting was the use of a dedicated website, or microsite, to explain things.

It’s not so much the content of the website that I found effective, but rather that the firms chose not bury the information on their respective websites. They could have each created dedicated internal pages on their websites; or, they could have taken the new combined firm domain name and started their transition process. Indecently, the domain . . . [more]

Its online. Its free. Its Canadian. With so many good points in its favour without even talking about it, why am I posting? One of the things we try to do at Slaw is let people know what is out there in the information market. Some of us got a chance to see the quiet launch of this new tool at the CALL/ACBD/MichALL conference earlier this month in Windsor. For those who missed it, Irwin Law says:

We are very pleased to announce the launch of the Canadian Online Legal Dictionary, a dictionary of legal words and phrases. This

In outsourcing agreements, customers usually request the so-called most favoured customer (MFC) clause from their service providers. The MFC clause is a promise from the service provider to treat the customer not less favourably than its customers. The clause can take various forms but invariably it requires the service provider who offers lower charges to any other customers for the same or substantially similar services to reduce the charge of the customers. Some customers like the clause because it provides them with comfort that the charges under its outsourcing agreement will be competitive during the term of the contract. This . . . [more]

Today’s a day that Phil Anisman must have wondered whether he would see. Back in 1979, he published Proposals for a securities market law for Canada.

A national Securities Bill unveiled, a Canadian Securities Regulatory Authority established and the scheme instantly referred to the Supreme Court of Canada.

As the preamble says:

1. capital markets affect the well-being and prosperity of all Canadians;
2. capital markets are increasingly national and international in scope;
3. capital markets are rapidly evolving and include increasingly complex financial products and methods of distribution and trading;
4. it is important for Canada to have competitive capital markets and

On Tuesday, May 25, the Minister of Industry introduced in Parliament Bill C29, also known as an Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Bill C-29 is the long-awaited government response to the five year mandatory review of PIPEDA and contains a number of very significant amendments that, if passed, will alter the landscape of privacy law compliance in Canada. At a very high level, it provides mandatory breach notification for security breaches related to personal information, attempts to clarify the confusing “lawful authority” provisions in Section 7 and also facilitates the disclosure of customer . . . [more]

At the end of September, four members of the Ontario Government Libraries Council (OGLC) presented a workshop at Showcase Ontario, the Ontario government’s enormous technology and information conference. The session was about how to use non-traditional media such as blogs and Twitter for current awareness, and included two practical case studies from the Office of the Fire Marshal and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Registrations for the session topped 400. Since then, various members of the panel have been asked to make presentations to other audiences, to contribute content to articles reporting on social media use in government, and . . . [more]