The Ontario Court of Appeal has upheld a Superior Court Judge’s decision to set aside a default judgment obtained by the plaintiff and allow the defendant the opportunity to enter a defence.

The plaintiff provided various crop services to the defendant for a number of years. The defendant would routinely pay the plaintiff’s invoices late. This was not necessarily problematic since the plaintiff trusted the defendant and its invoices were usually paid, albeit late.

As the defendant got older, his son took a more active involvement in the defendant’s operations. While the plaintiff trusted the defendant, it did not trust . . . [more]

The following is a guest post by Lynne Yryku, Managing Editor, CCCA Magazine:

Under the general theme of women in law, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin opened the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association’s National Conference in Calgary this morning. Her colleague and friend, former Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major had praised her ability to maintain harmony and collegiality in the Supreme Court of Canada as way of introduction, and her open and frank style of discussing such a hot topic lived up to expectation.

The Chief Justice began by reviewing the great progress Canada had made over the past . . . [more]

The Conservative government in Ottawa introduced the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights last week.

Canada is not the only country where such legislation is topical, and interestingly conservative politicians are not the only ones promoting it.

The Victims’ Task Force, founded by the UK Labour Party, will be meeting victims groups and justice representatives in London today. The Labour Party has committed to a “radical change in approach”. If a law is passed it will be the first in Britain’s legal history.

On both sides of the Atlantic and on both ends of the political spectrum, the same conclusion . . . [more]

The newest offering from CanLII, CanLII Connects launched on Friday. The site is meant as a place to gather case commentary on Canadian court decisions. From the site:

CanLII Connects was created to make it faster and easier for legal professionals and the public to access high-quality legal commentary on Canadian court decisions.

We bring together lawyers, scholars and others with professional competency in legal analysis to share their insights and form collective opinions.*

The site is being launched with 27,000 pieces of content and is expected to grow significantly. To submit content, add comments, or vote up commentary . . . [more]

Microsoft will no longer be supporting Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) and Office 2003 (SP3) as of April 8, 2014. After this date, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, support or online technical content updates from Microsoft for these products. Your computer will still operate, but if you continue to use Windows XP or Office 2003, you will become more vulnerable to security risks and malware infections. Undoubtedly, cyber criminals will target computers that are still using these programs.

For this reason, you should immediately start planning to migrate to more current versions of Windows and . . . [more]

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Susan On The Soapbox   2. First Reference   3. Official Clio Blog   4. À bon droit    5. Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada

2014 started off with a bang in the legal marketing world when Georgia lawyer Jamie Casino ran a two-minute local television ad during this year’s Superbowl that includes (and I’m hardly scratching the surface here) biblical references, allegations of a cover-up by the area’s chief of police in the death of Casino’s brother, and a sunglass-clad Casino wielding a flaming sledgehammer to smash his brother’s tombstone while a pounding heavy metal soundtrack plays in the background, all of which apparently provides the backstory for Casino’s decision to move from criminal defense to personal injury law as his preferred area of . . . [more]

We usually hear about the attempted use of social media by the opposite side to discredit a party. But what about the use of social media to bolster a defence in anticipation of litigation?

Andrew Jarvis, a Pennsylvania architect, was concerned the Department of Revenue would audit him and ask him to pay additional taxes once he opened up an office in New York, where he spent a considerable amount of time.

The State changed the domicile requirements in 2012. They conduct residency audits because residents are subject to tax on worldwide income, whereas non-residents are only taxed for the . . . [more]

This week's summaries concern: Public utilities & rates / Expert evidence:

DROITS ET LIBERTÉS : S'adresser au notaire ou à l'avocat en le menaçant par ailleurs d'une poursuite pénale s'il n'obtempère pas à la demande péremptoire de l'Agence du revenu du Canada n'est pas conforme aux exigences énoncées à l'article 8 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés de la personne, le conseiller juridique se trouvant placé dans une intenable situation de conflit d'intérêts.

I just couldn’t make a call on which REM song title is best for a post about law school exams…… Let’s knock out “It’s the End of the World as we Know it”, because it isn’t. The ironic part of me likes “Shiny Happy People” but I have to acknowledge “Everybody Hurts” and “Losing my Religion” are pretty good too. Why the song catalogue for a band from Georgia? You know this, the tip I want to give this week on the verge of exam period is to wear sunscreen …. wait that’s not it….get enough REM sleep whilst . . . [more]

There have been discussions on whether information can be ‘property’ for legal purposes (such as here and here), and the limits on that equivalence and the reasons for them. The English (and Welsh) Court of Appeal has recently addressed itself to that question again, in Your Response v Datateam Business Media [2014] EWCA Civ 281.

In that case, Your Response was working on a database of Datateam’s customers. In a dispute about payment, Your Response claimed a lien over the database and refused to return it to Datateam in the absence of payment.

The Court of Appeal held that . . . [more]