For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, usually followed by a reference you might like to pursue. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files. You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.

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MEASURING LIFE
 
Chapter 26
Getting the Lead Out

. . . [more]

In the summer disaster movie, San Andreas, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s character scours earthquake-rocked California in a helicopter, plane and then speedboat to save his family members from fires and floods. We see him engage in feats of athletic prowess, but we also see him learn to talk about his feelings, and in particular the pain and regret he experienced following the death of his younger daughter. Lawyers at all stages of their careers may do well to follow the Rock’s example and practice talking more openly about their feelings, but this lesson may be particularly relevant for law students. . . . [more]

I feel that now is the time to bring an important issue to your attention but, since it’s coming to the end of summer, I’m going to keep this short. How much did your law firm spend on its last firm retreat? What was your return on the investment? Did you expect there to be a return or did you even view the money spent as an investment?

The average 50 lawyer firm can spend anywhere from $50,000-$100,000 on a retreat, depending on location and activities. So once every year or two that’s the retreat budget for a weekend away. . . . [more]

A current appeal in CIBC v. Computershare raises basic questions under the Ontario Land Titles Act. It’s also the first time that the courts have dealt with the many 2006 changes to the Act.

In CIBC v. Computershare, owners had fraudulently caused a discharge of their first mortgage to be registered. The owners had continued their payments and so the lender didn’t know about the discharge. Later, the owners had taken a loan under a new registered first mortgage. Under the Act, the new first mortgage had priority. But the trial court mistakenly decided that the old first . . . [more]

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.

The Worst $90,000 Ever Spent: Ten Questions About Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright, the Criminal Code and the Canadian Criminal Justice System
Peter Sankoff, Professor, University of Alberta Faculty of Law

Excerpt: Introduction and points 1-4. To read the paper in its entirety, please click on the title above to download from SSRN. . . . [more]

No matter what government will lead Quebec, religious neutrality of the state seems to be common ground among the political parties. Yet the media and the rest of Canada don’t seem to make much of it unless it is brought up by the Parti Quebecois.

Adjudicators who are appointed by cabinet order (variously referred to as Order in Council (OIC) or Governor in Council (GIC) appointees) have very little job security, beyond the term of their appointment. Historically, a reappointment was never guaranteed and the reasons for not being renewed in your position were not provided. The difficulty with a non-transparent system of renewal is that no one (including the adjudicator) knows the reason for a non-renewal.

Ontario instituted a new process for reappointments (or renewals) in 2006. The major reform was to limit appointments to ten years, subject to the recommendation of the Tribunal . . . [more]

Lately the news has been too full of weighty stuff like elections, the Ashley Madison hack, stock markets, and the Chinese economy.

So today’s post is a bit lighter.

Courts in the United States have recently decided whether copyright applies to chicken sandwiches and to cheerleading uniforms. They decided that it applies to one – but not to the other.

If you guessed it doesn’t apply to the chicken sandwich, you got it right. In the US Court of Appeals the parties were fighting over rights to a sandwich consisting of a fried chicken breast topped with lettuce, tomato, cheese . . . [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. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company v High Park Medical & Rehabilitation Centre Ltd, 2015 ONSC 5169

[9] Finally, I note that in my endorsement, I limited the parties to three pages of submissions on costs. I also required the defendants to deliver a Costs Outline for comparison purposes. I expressly directed that case law was not to be provided but that . . . [more]

“Quality”. It’s one of those nouns and/or adjectives that everyone uses to describe their own output standards but for the most part is applied to whatever level – high, medium or low, that they are willing and/or able to offer. In many respects, though, that’s a good and desirable thing as more often than not there are no objective standards of quality such as those of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). In any case, sensibly, the word should be preceded by “optimum”, “appropriate” or suchlike as quality cannot be divorced from competence, price, speed, brand . . . [more]

As the end to our summer doldrums draws close, I’m dusting off my RSS feeds and finding some updates on a topic that I touched on earlier this year: the webmail encryption services coming out of Germany.

Back in March I wrote Of German Email Encryption Tool Tutanota and Other PETs, which mentioned a number of new players in the Privacy Enhancing Technologies space that seemingly could make lawyers better at client confidentiality. Not a bad thing, eh?

In a breach-a-day world even lawyers without a particular passion for technology issues are beginning to take note of email encryption. . . . [more]

One of the things that drives me crazy is the sure knowledge that there are things that would benefit me that I don’t take advantage of. An expiry date on a fuel discount coupon, a limited time offer that I decide to late to accept, seat sales that I miss the deadline for.

Sometimes we miss efficiency opportunities because we don’t think hard enough about how something that we are doing will be re-done or repeated. For example, some not too old precedents that I recently unearthed had *** rather than a programmed form field wherever text needed to be . . . [more]