Sometimes judges get it wrong. Even when they sit on the highest court of the land.

The nature of the common law is that decisions that are poorly written (a generous excuse for decisions which are poorly decided) still have binding authority, especially when made by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The interpretation of freedom of association under s. 2(d) of the Charter has undergone considerable change over the years. Courts generally applied a restrictive approach towards this right, until the 2007 decision in Health Services and Support — Facilities Subsector Bargaining Assn. v. British Columbia (“B.C. Health“), . . . [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:
Mechanics’ Liens – Civil Rights – Criminal Law – Police

Yorkwest Plumbing Supply Inc. v. Nortown Plumbing (1998) Ltd. et al. 2014 ONCA 5655
Mechanics’ Liens
Summary: Nortown Plumbing (1998) Ltd. was a contractor for plumbing services for new homes in two residential subdivisions. Yorkwest Plumbing Supply Inc. supplied Nortown with plumbing materials which . . . [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.

CONSTITUTIONNEL (DROIT) : Un juge d’une cour fédérale qui était membre du Barreau du Québec avant son accession à la magistrature peut être nommé à la Cour d’appel du Québec ou à la Cour supérieure du Québec.

Intitulé : Renvoi sur l’article 98 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867 (Dans . . . [more]

At some point in our education, we learn that we live in a nomocracy, a society governed by the rule of law. Although the phrase trips lightly off the tongue of judges and deans at call ceremonies, it is in fact a complex and enormously important concept that underpins our system of government and separates Canada from not only North Korea but from more junior democracies, like Thailand and Egypt, prone to coups d’état.

Apart from meaty ideas about fundamental justice, arbitrary decision-making and the independence and interrelationship of the branches of government, the rule of law also describes certain . . . [more]

Governments increasingly are putting official documents online without any paper ‘original’ or equivalent. Does that present challenges in practice for proving those documents?

What is your experience producing in court or generally under the evidence statutes official government documents that appear only online?

There is good statutory support for producing documents ‘printed’ by government, sometimes by class of document but sometimes as broad as ‘other public document’.

Will courts accept a printout of a web page (or, I suppose, a live in-court online presentation of a web page) showing a government URL as being ‘published by the Queen’s Printer’, at . . . [more]

Can you / should you / do you rely on the product of search engines as evidence in civil or criminal matters? Do you base legal advice on what you find on search engines, or on the use made of them?

A recent article in Canadian Lawyer canvasses some of the possibilities.

The Ontario Superior Court held that one could not establish facts by showing how often certain terms were used in Google searches. That was for the purpose of the certification of a class action.

However, showing previous use or actual use of trade marks can be done . . . [more]

What is it about beauty? You can’t eat it. You can’t spend it. You can’t get agreement on it. Yes, what is beauty, anyway?

Some would say it depends on whom you ask — that is, that beauty lies, well, not in the holder but in the beholder, a projection, in effect. Others would espouse a version of that in which the beholder is an entire culture and beauty is a matter of group-think. Still others go even wider, making beauty a phenom of nature, which is more or less to say that beauty is an objective reality at least . . . [more]

Early in my career, when I was a freshly hatched legal editor, I pored over the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (the McGill Guide). It answered many of my questions about the finer points of legal citation: the meaning of square or round brackets; which words should be italicized; the correct order of parallel cites; and so on. I’m pretty sure I was using the first or second edition (we’re talking about 1988 and 1989). The Guide was tremendously helpful to me; although the rules were somewhat complex, they were clearly spelled out and easy to follow. On reflection, . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) is accepting nominations for the 2015 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

It honours a publisher (whether for-profit or not-for profit, corporate or non-corporate) that has demonstrated excellence by publishing a work, series, website or e-product that makes a significant contribution to legal research and scholarship.

Members as well as non-members of CALL can make nominations.

Nominations can be submitted to Cyndi Murphy [cmurphy AT stewartmckelvey.com], past president of CALL, before February 15, 2015.

The award honours Hugh Lawford (1933-2009), Professor of Law at Queens’ University and the founder . . . [more]

n Emslie v Doholoco Holdings Ltd., the Manitoba Human Rights Adjudication Panel concluded that the company's owner sexually harassed an employee and the company was liable as the employer-for an award of $36,000.

Confidentiality and privacy are often mentioned as advantages of mediation and arbitration over litigation in commercial disputes.

In some cases, of course, the threat of publicity can be a tactical advantage for one party. But, going into an agreement at least, both parties usually have an interest in protecting trade secrets and business goodwill. Even after a dispute arises, private and public-sector organizations may be reluctant to air their disputes in public, for a variety of reasons. So they want any agreed dispute resolution process to be private and confidential.

Recent cases in Canada and elsewhere illustrate the care parties . . . [more]

The Provincial Court of BC recently announced the relaunch of its website, which had been undergoing incremental change for the past year. In keeping with the scope and reach of the Court and access to justice principles, the new features appear designed to offer accessible public and professional understanding of the Court, its operations, and its initiatives. The redesign features information about alternative dispute resolution, links for self-represented litigants, and updates about Court initiatives, among other things.

It should go without saying that the new site also continues to offer current case law, and I want to highlight the . . . [more]