This being Friday the 13th, my alternative post-title was the name of the song you’ll find here and here; on the other hand, I am allergic to most cats, black or otherwise. What does that have to do with the problem in the decision I’m about to write about? Well … how about this? If we can’t blame the problem on “slow aether”, maybe it’s just bad luck. I mean, what else could it be?

Consider these paragraphs from Taylor v Great Gulf Group Limited, 2015 ONSC 6891 (CanLII) released on 9 Nov. 2015. Taylor is the . . . [more]

We tend to repeat ourselves. We like doing that. Perhaps because if “it” was good, we’d be crazy not to want “it” again. After all, as Voltaire said (though he laid it off on a “wise Italian”), better is the enemy of good. So why risk loss, when the gain promised by repetition is assured? And, too, there’s something about the fact of repetition itself, regardless of what the thing is that gets repeated, that is pleasing, soothing: a child being rocked, jiggled gently — or a heart beating again and again and again . . .

Things can go . . . [more]

According to the English media, Facebook is thinking of generating an automatic warning to a member who posts a picture of a child to a publicly-accessible page on Facebook.

Is this a serious over-reaction to the threat that the kid – or the parents – face from such a posting? How many people are actually affected by predators of any kind using online pictures? What proportion are those victims of the numbers of people whose pics are on FB?

Is this a tactic by FB to appear to be concerned about privacy when its entire lucrative business model is . . . [more]

Two recent situations have led to calls for international accountability mechanisms. The responses to these calls differ widely. Why is this interesting? They show the potential of a more open justice innovation approach. And the costs of not doing so.

The first situation is the tragic downing of flight Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine on 17 July 2014, which led to 298 deaths. Politicians from the counties that suffered most losses – The Netherlands, Australia, and Malaysia – where quick to capture the public sentiment and announced: those responsible will be held to account. This was given international force . . . [more]

In R. v Cusick, the Ontario Superior Court upheld a search warrant of a computer where that computer was suspected of having been used to upload child pornography to a cloud storage service.

What one searches for, apparently, are ‘artifacts’ – digital traces of the child porn files that passed through the computer on the way to the cloud. The case notes the difference between uploading from the computer’s hard drive (in which case the files may also still be on the computer) and uploading from a USB drive or mobile device (in which case they may not be, . . . [more]

The Manitoba Customer Service Accessibility Standard (CSAS) under the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA) came into effect November 1, 2015. The CSAS requires all of Manitoba’s public, private and non-profit organizations with one or more employees that provide goods or services directly to the public or to another organization in Manitoba, to establish and implement measures, policies and practices to remove barriers for access to the goods or services it provides. . . . [more]

In August of 2015 Gerard Comeau of Tracadie, New Brunswick, was the defendant in a trial following an agreed statement of facts. In October of 2012 Comeau bought 14 cases of beer in Quebec which he brought into New Brunswick where he was stopped by the police. Comeau was charged under the New Brunswick Liquor Control Act with illegally importing beer into New Brunswick. The beer was cheaper in Quebec than in New Brunswick. Comeau was fined $292.

At trial Comeau argued that the limitations in the New Brunswick Liquor Control Act were unconstitutional because s. 121 of the Constitution . . . [more]

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates

I predict that the first components of a litigation file to be completely automated are the drafting of:

• Common Pleadings (e.g. Statement of Claim for “slip and fall”);
• Affidavit of Documents; and
• Discovery Plans for common actions.

Why?

These documents are rule based, and computer programs love rules. I envision a computer program asking questions at the beginning of the file . . . [more]

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter) guarantees that everyone has the “freedom of association” (section 2(d)). The Charter’s guarantee of freedom of association has often been leveraged to protect employees’ rights in the labour relations context. According to recent media reports, the union that represents the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) employees is looking to rely on section 2(d) to combat provincial legislation that declares the TTC an essential service and prohibits its employees from striking.

In January 2015, section 2(d) was successfully used to persuade a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada to . . . [more]

Bob Ambrogi blogged this morning that two more U.S. states have adopted amendments to their legal profession rules of conduct that include technological competence as part of a lawyer’s overall duty of competence, bringing the total number of states having adopted this duty to 17. The duty first appeared in the ABA Model Rules in 2012, as Comment 8 to Rule 1.1, as follows:

To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, engage in continuing study and

I don’t normally do movie reviews, but Spectre, the latest James Bond movie, has a cautionary tale about the surveillance society that is worth commenting on. It deals with the undemocratic / totalitarian / dystopian aspects of ubiquitous surveillance.

Some reviewers have been critical about the movie, but my view of Bond movies is that they are more about entertainment than plot and character development.

Some elements of the movie are uncomfortably real – like its spin on the five eyes network . After I saw it I wondered what Ed Snowden would think. This is what Wikipedia has to . . . [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. R. v. Morris, 2011 ONSC 5142

12. The defence argued that, because the police did not believe Mr. Morris had committed an HTA infraction, they did not have an HTA-related purpose for stopping Mr. Morris’ vehicle. In so arguing, the defence pointed to Officer Ciric’s candid statement that, but for the “Caution”, he would not have pulled over the car. Because . . . [more]