Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Law Firm Partners and the Scope of Labour Laws

Brian Langille, Professor of Law, University of Toronto and Pnina Alon-Shenker, Associate Professor and Director of Ryerson Law & Business Clinic, Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University

Reprinted with permission. (2015) 4:2 Canadian Journal of Human Rights 211

Excerpt: Introductory . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern:
Company Law – Civil Rights – Statutes – Insurance – Damages – Evidence – Practice – Conflict of Laws

Rea et al. v. Wildeboer et al. 2015 ONCA 373
Company Law
Summary: The plaintiffs asserted an oppression claim under s. 248 of the Business Corporations Act alleging misappropriation of funds from Martinrea International Inc. . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Susan on the Soapbox  2. Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada 3. First Reference Talks  4. Canadian Securities Law  5. Clicklaw Blog

Susan on the Soapbox
194 ABCs and Why They Matter

The other day on the campaign trail I met a Bearded Dragon. He was curled up . . . [more]

Today is the payment deadline for the $3,164 fee levied by the Law Society of Upper Canada to fund its controversial new Law Practice Program, an alternate pathway to licensing for those unable or unwilling to secure articles. Regular readers of Slaw will recall that when the fee was announced in February, law students rallied against it – a petition calling for a more just and equitable model of funding the experimental program garnered more than 800 signatures.

While a few sympathetic benchers spoke up at Convocation in favour of the petition, the Law Society took no action. The chair . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Morland-Jones v. Taerk, 2014 ONSC 3061

[21] The antics have only gotten worse since then. Ms. Morland-Jones has shouted at the Taerks from her front yard, and Ms. Taerk has given Ms. Morland-Jones “the finger” from her front driveway. The Defendants have apparently called the police on the Plaintiffs numerous times in recent years; the Plaintiffs have responded by retaining a . . . [more]

A group of law students has drafted an open letter to the Benchers of the Law Society of Upper Canada calling for the repeal of the fee levied on licensee applicants in order to fund the LPP. According to a communication from Christopher Rudnicki, a third year student at Windsor Law:

As discussed in a previous post on Slaw, the Law Society of Upper Canada sent licensee candidates an invoice last week for $3,164 on top of the $1,695 already required to write the bar. The additional fee was levied to fund the LSUC’s new Law Practice Program, an

. . . [more]

At issue in the second request for reconsideration is the Tribunal’s determination that an ongoing wage differential between disabled and non-disabled employees is not a series of incidents for the purposes of determining the limitation period provided by section 34(1) of the Human Rights Code.

One of the interesting developments during the summer slowdown we failed to note here on Slaw was the BC Court of Appeal decision in John McCormick’s case against Fasken Martineau. McCormick is an equity partner in Fasken’s Vancouver office who resisted the mandatory retirement at age 65 required by the partnership agreement, arguing that it contravened the BC Human Rights Code’s prohibition on age discrimination with respect to employees. The critical hinge to his action is whether an equity partner in a law firm should be regarded as an “employee” for the purposes of the Code, thus giving the Human . . . [more]

Western Law hosted a forum on pension reform this past Thursday, featuring community leaders, legal academics, and practitioners.

Pension Plan Basics

Prof. Robert Brown of the University of Waterloo explained some of the basics behind pensions.

There are two kinds of pension plans, defined benefit and defined contribution plans. A defined benefit plan provides flat benefits at a specified amount per year of work. They can present a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of benefits, but if investments are hit hard it can decrease amount of funds, and they are often open to the vagaries of . . . [more]

Summer is for weeding. The horticultural among us use the sunny days for tending to their gardens. The bibliocultural among us tend to our collections. This summer, as every summer, I read shelves, assessed collection strengths, and determined the fate of subscriptions and individual volumes – keep or chuck? Repair or replace? Track down missing volumes, or write them off? And I shifted, and I shifted, and I shifted. We’ve now got grow room in the areas that need it, and I got a great upper body workout.

Shifting books is one of those activities that permit contemplation. As I . . . [more]