This week was the BIO international convention. 15,000 screaming fans biotech nerds converged on Chicago for a week of … well… I wrote a song about it.

Highlights were:

• Consulting company Battelle collaborated with BIO to release a report on biotech employment and government initiativeson a state-by-state level across the U.S. The data covers an interesting time period (2001-2008) and showed flat job numbers in pharma even before the 2008 recession and industry consolidation;
• A session on partnering with nonprofits was full of insight on why these collaborations are good for companies, nonprofits and patients; and
• A session

It might be time to visit once again the substance and situation of Bill C-232, which received 3rd Reading on March 31 and awaits Royal Assent to become law. The text the legislation is as follows:

1. Section 5 of the Supreme Court Act is renumbered as subsection 5(1) and is amended by adding the following:

(2) In addition, any person referred to in subsection (1) may be appointed a judge who understands French and English without the assistance of an interpreter.

1. L’article 5 de la Loi sur la Cour suprême devient le paragraphe 5(1) et est modifié par

We are waiting for a 10 am press conference by U.S. President Obama to announce his Supreme Court judge selection. Elena Kagan, former dean of Harvard Law School and the current U.S. Solicitor General appointed by Obama, is being reported as his top pick according to Business Week and a number of other sources. The Washington Post has a nice timeline of Kagan’s career to date. . . . [more]

♬ Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! Capoeira mata um!
Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! Capoeira mata um!♬

Music by: Serapis Bey, in the 1993 film Only the Strong
(Sorry David)

This past Friday the Supreme Court of British Columbia released the May 6 decision in Koubi v. Mazda Canada Inc. [Mazda], certifying a class-action under the Class Proceeding Act (CPA) on behalf of representative who purchased 17,909 Mazda3 vehicles between 2004 and 2007 over an alleged door lock defect.

The 20 authorized dealers in B.C. are defendants in the action. Similar actions have been filed in Ontario and . . . [more]

May 4, 2010, marked the 100th Anniversary of the Canadian Navy, a significant milestone all the more so in this part of the country. Tracing the legal roots, the Canadian Navy was created by the The Naval Service Act, S.C. 1910, c.43. (There are issues with the scan that I’ll fix at a later point), which came into force May 4th, 1910. The Nova Scotia Provincial Archives have posted an interesting gallery on the Canadian Navy posted to accompany the anniversary.

The reason I don’t have the necessary time to fix the scan is that I’m trying to . . . [more]

Some links on the result: CBC, BBC, ITN (in the news, a summary service), and The Times.

Here’s a good post from the Law Library of Congress on the fundamentals of the British general elections process, and a wikipedia page.

For news and interesting pre- and post-result commentary, see Vanity Fair Nate Silver, and Foreign Affairs.

And as a bonus, the BBC’s description of its projection of the results onto the side of Big Ben as they came in. . . . [more]

Today’s decision in R. v. National Post, 2010 SCC 16 (CanLII) contains the following line from Binnie J for the majority (McLachlin C.J. and Binnie, Deschamps, Fish, Charron, Rothstein and Cromwell JJ.:

As recently pointed out in Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, the protection attaching to freedom of expression is not limited to the “traditional media”, but is enjoyed by “everyone” (in the words of s. 2(b) of the Charter) who chooses to exercise his or her freedom of expression on matters of public interest whether by blogging, tweeting, standing on a street corner

It’s no secret that Canada’s mailboxes are disappearing. You often have to walk a mile or more for one of these ‘old skool’ objects. What you may not know, though, is that our scarce mailboxes are disappearing behind a kind of camouflage. Canada Post is going with a teflon sheet coating for the boxes that sports a crazy pattern of our postal codes, hoping to clad all of them by the end of the year, according to a story in the Toronto Star.

The point of this covering is not to make the boxes disappear from view, as would . . . [more]

The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive has just published its 3rd annual study of link rot (see link in the top right of the home page under “Additional Resources”).

Link rot describes “a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL and currently preserved in the Chesapeake Project’s digital archive (…) In some instances, a 404 or ‘not found’ message indicates link rot at a URL; in others, the URL may direct to a site hosted by the original publishing organization or entity, but the specific resource has been removed or . . . [more]

There’s an interesting article in the latest issue of Forbes Magazine on the Worst Words to Say at Work. For quick reference, those words are: “try”, “whatever”, “maybe” and “I don’t know”, “I’ll get back to you”, “If”, “yes, but…”, “I guess”, and “we’ll see…”.

It’s an interesting list. But I have to say, there’s a time and place for everything – including weak language. Far too often, and especially in the legal profession, command and control personalities leave a wake of unproductive business operations behind them. Workplaces that are so scared to cause waves, the ability of employees . . . [more]

I have my fingers and toes crossed that an Apple Store in Michigan can hook me up with a shiny new iPad tomorrow. I am flying through Detroit on my way to the CALL/MichALL 2010 Conference in Windsor. An iPad is an early birthday present since an e-reader has been on my must have list for a while. Now that I can acquire an e-reader on steroids, I can’t wait any longer. Canadians have to wait for the iPad release, and since I can’t reserve over the phone, or online without a US mailing address, I just have to make . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of India yesterday delivered a lengthy judgment in the case of Smt. Selvi & Ors. v. State of Karnataka Criminal Appeal No. 1267 of 2004, which, in the words of the Chief Justice, involved a:

batch of criminal appeals [relating] to the involuntary administration of certain scientific techniques, namely narcoanalysis, polygraph examination and the Brain Electrical Activation Profile (BEAP) test for the purpose of improving investigation efforts in criminal cases.

The three-judge bench held that “the compulsory administration the impugned techniques violated the ‘right against self-incrimination'” and violated as well “the standard of ‘substantive due process’ . . . [more]