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. AVI v MHVB, 2020 ABQB 489 (CanLII)

[2] Pseudolaw is typically employed by conspiratorial, fringe, criminal, and dissident minorities who claim pseudolaw replaces or displaces conventional law. These groups attempt to gain advantage, authority, and other benefits via this false law. In Meads v Meads, 2012 ABQB 571 [Meads], Associate Chief Justice Rooke reviewed many forms of and . . . [more]

When I was articling, eons ago, I came across a judge who smoked in court, made off-hand comments affecting his decisions without any evidentiary basis (“everyone knows what a second hand Lincoln costs”) and made sexist comments towards me (“bring this young lady into my chambers”). He was well-known in the particular legal community (I was merely “visiting” on a discovery issue) and no one thought there was a way to contain him. Indeed, as I sat in the courtroom waiting my turn, I was warned about him. I think of this judge as an “outlier”, beyond the reach of . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

More Miscellaneous Misuses
Neil Guthrie

Small things to watch for and avoid. Any questions, please contact X. We’ve all seen this, and we all know what it is intended to mean. Interpreted literally, it means the questions themselves are being directed to contact X. … . . . [more]

In these extraordinary times of the pandemic, unusual steps must be taken to protect the public interest. On March 25, 2020, the Government of Canada’s sweeping COVID-19 Emergency Response Act received royal assent. Among its many measures is a compulsory licensing clause for patents that enables the Government “to make, construct, use and sell a patented invention to the extent necessary to respond to a public health emergency that is a matter of national concern.” This suspension of patent rights is not to be without recompense for the patent holder, but that, too, was framed in unusual ways on behalf . . . [more]

I was recently invited to participate in a Runnymede Society debate against Asher Honickman—a co-founder of the Society—on “the future of legal education and curriculum.” I paused. I consulted. I reflected. And now, I am declining that invitation. But I want to explain why.

As a former debater and mooter, I love to argue. But as a legal scholar—and especially, a scholar of critical race theory—I am mindful of power and its inseverability from the conversations we engage in. Thinking about power, and its particular dynamics within the context of this proposed Runnymede Society debate, is ultimately what led me . . . [more]

Tort law in relation to alcohol-related injuries continues to grow and evolve over time, especially with a better understanding of how alcohol use can create a public harm, requiring a greater assumption of duty of care in certain circumstances.

In 1974, the Supreme Court of Canada released their decision in Menow v. Jordan House Ltd., which evaluated a frequent and well-known patron of a hotel who became intoxicated there contrary to liquor licensing legislation. The patron was ejected by the defendant when he started to annoy the other customers. However, the patron knew that he would have to walk . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

TRAVAIL : L’arbitre saisi d’un grief contestant la destitution d’un policier, lequel est relatif à l’application de l’article 119 de la Loi sur la police, n’est pas lié par la décision qu’a rendue le Comité de déontologie policière.

Intitulé : Fraternité des policiers et policières de Gatineau c. Moro, . . . [more]

On August 26th, Lexbox benefited from a major update. Among the new features included in this release is the capacity to link to the CanLII website the legal citations from your documents, as discussed in last month’s post. We invite you to try it out by submitting a few of your own files to your Lexbox account and checking how they get interconnected with CanLII’s content.

But this post is about Lexum’s next step in providing Knowledge Management as a Service (KMaaS): making it easier for you to keep track of changes to public legal information affecting the issues . . . [more]

If you’re reading this blog and are a litigator in Toronto, there’s a fair chance that you’ve been involved either as a participant or an instructor in Osgoode’s Intensive Trial Advocacy Workshop (ITAW). ITAW is a multi-day program that has run every summer for the last 40 years and has had thousands of participants from Toronto, from across Canada, and from other parts of the world. It’s a rigorous program, characterized by advocacy performance in a supportive environment, personalized feedback from experienced instructors from the Bench and Bar trained in ITAW’s teaching methods, and a culminating mock jury trial presided . . . [more]

Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

What is the employer’s liability to a former employee who is dismissed from a fixed-term contract without cause, when that employee mitigates his or her loss by finding another job? Faced with mixed jurisprudence from other jurisdictions, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal answers this question for that province in Crook v Druxbury, 2020 SKCA 43 (CanLII), rendering a decision that is harmonious with the state of the law in Alberta and British Columbia. As a result, in those three Western provinces, the former employee’s mitigation of his or her loss serves . . . [more]

It was not a surprise to us when classes and events were cancelled on campus mid March 2020. As an international lawyer with an interest in international disaster law I had been following the international response with dread. A faculty-led COVID-19 response team was already in place and meeting daily when the call came to transition to on-line delivery. Although we largely had to cancel our events, courses that had materials left to be delivered moved swiftly to online platforms and the exam schedule was revised from primarily sit-down, to entirely take-home. At the forefront of our deliberations was the . . . [more]