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.

PROFESSIONS : La bâtonnière Lu Chan Khuong ne pourra réintégrer ses fonctions à la tête de l’Ordre professionnel des avocats du Québec dans l’attente du jugement final au fond.

Intitulé : Khuong c. Asselin, 2015 QCCS 3937
Juridiction : Cour supérieure (C.S.), 200-05-020080-151
Décision de : Juge Michel Beaupré
Date . . . [more]

This is Part 3 in a series looking at the requirements related to “service animals” under the Accessibility Standards for Customer Service, Ontario Regulation 429/07 (the “Standards”) of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (the “Act”). Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.

For organizations that are subject to the Standards, service animals must be allowed to enter the premises unless “otherwise excluded by law.” The Ministry of Economic Development, Employment & Infrastructure website specifically identifies regulations under the Health Promotion Act and the Food Safety and Quality Act, 2001, respectively, as two examples of . . . [more]

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.

MEASURING LIFE
 
Chapter 28
Keep Calm and Carillon

For the first time in recent memory, the Federal Court has issued an interlocutory injunction in an intellectual property proceeding. In April, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the injunction issued to Rickett Benckiser LLC.

The standard test for issuing an injunction is set by the Supreme Court of Canada in RJR MacDonald which requires the moving party establish:

• a serious issue to be tried;
• irreparable harm will result to the moving party if the relief is not granted; and
• the balance of convenience favours the moving party.

Of these three parts to the test, finding ‘irreparable harm’ is typically . . . [more]

Many local public libraries as well as law libraries are actively involved in access to justice initiatives.

In a recent post entitled Justice at your library? on the website of PLE Learning Exchange Ontario, Michele Leering, the Executive Director with the Community Advocacy & Legal Centre in Belleville, Ontario, writes about one such project, the Librarians & Justice partnership in southeastern Ontario.

She also provides a link to a page about PLE for librarians [PLE = public legal education]:

“Library staff in Ontario are ideally placed to serve as key intermediaries in distributing legal information and referrals to library

This is an update regarding the Quebec Bar Association’s controversial suspension of its recently elected bencher, Me Lu Chan Khuong (see our past blog posts here and here). To summarize, the bar association’s board of directors suspended Khuong after it went public that in 2014 she had been arrested on suspicion of shoplifting two pairs of jeans at a Simons store in Laval. Khuong sued the bar for $95,000 in damages and filed a safeguard order to be reinstated to her position as president of the bar.

Additional allegations surface

Now, the bar has countered with its own lawsuit . . . [more]

When the Chief Justice of Canada highlights global liberalization of legal services regulation, recognizes that our old monopolies are fading, says that the legal profession must embrace new ways of doing business and that the question is not whether our rules should be liberalized but how, even those most resistant to change must take heed.

On August 14, 2015, Chief Justice McLachlin addressed the Canadian Bar Association annual plenary in Calgary . In her remarks entitled The Legal Profession in the 21st Century, the Chief Justice suggested that the legal profession must ask itself three questions:

• First, where does

On Friday Oct 2, 2015 in Vancouver, BC, the ninth Pacific Legal Technology Conference will take place. But it can also take place right in your office. This year 13 sessions will be real-time webcast (the keynote will be recorded and made available for viewing after the conference due to logistical issues) allowing both in person and webinar attendees to fully participate in the conference.

28 speakers from Toronto, New York City, Salt Lake City, Alaska and all across BC will speak on such sessions as “Blending Technology with Strong Advocacy Skills”, “Practice Management Tools: There has never been a . . . [more]

At the recent Canadian Bar Association Legal Conference in Calgary, I had the opportunity to join a panel on the subject of lawyers working effectively with those from other professional backgrounds. The panel focused on the benefits of a cross-disciplinary team approach, arising from the recommendation of the CBA Legal Futures report to permit multi-disciplinary practice arrangements. I opened by pointing out why I think this matters (or ought to matter) to lawyers:

1. So they’ll be better lawyers (which was the theme of the conference) through greater focus, enhanced skills and a broader knowledge base; and
2. So that clients will

Good news colleagues!

I have received a response from the Attorney General for Ontario to our petition to re-instate the E-Laws Detailed Legislative History Tables.

Please see her response below, which includes full details of the new approach
that the E-Laws team is working on.

We are encouraged to send our feedback to them.

Thanks to everyone for participating in this petition!

All the best
Annette

From: JUS-G-MAG-Webmaster [mailto:JUS.G.MAG.Webmaster@ontario.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2015 3:39 PM
To: Annette Demers
Cc: Spakowski, Mark (MAG); Merdzan, Susan (MAG)
Subject: Ministry of the Attorney General Response – MC-2015-5161

Our Reference #: MC-2015-5161

Ms. . . . [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 Villaroman, 2015 ABCA 104

[19] We have trouble seeing that circumstantial evidence could prove guilt where it leaves a reasonable (not remote) possibility that the event occurred in a way not involving the accused. A jury cannot act on an unreasonable inference. It is not necessary that there be actual evidence of that innocent possibility; the onus is on . . . [more]

Can efforts to avoid charges of spoliation of evidence involve violation of privacy norms?

Evidence

Data storage has become very inexpensive. Finding information among masses of data is steadily becoming more manageable – one can turn loose the power of Google or other search engines on one’s own business data. One can use various forms of predictive coding to sort files for particular topics or for degrees of sensitivity: what’s relevant, what’s privileged, and so on.

On the other hand, it can be dangerous not to keep data. The rules of evidence have always included sanctions against spoliation. In days . . . [more]