From Microsoft, it was about great developers (see here for a really geeky reference). For employment lawyers, it’s about great investigations. Employment lawyers often harp on the need to do proper investigations into workplace incidents even when “everyone knows” what happened. Even where the person likely did do something improper that would justify termination, the failure to investigate properly and give the employee the chance to tell their side of the story can be fatal to a wrongful dismissal suit.

The recent Ontario case of Ludchen v. Stelcrete Industries Ltd., 2013 ONSC 7495, is a great example of . . . [more]

The ABA Journal has a story about a law firm falling victim to a cyber attack that locked up the firm’s computer files for ransom. Here’s the text of the article:

The good news: No law firm or client data was taken.

The bad news: Attorney Paul Goodson and his staff can’t access his Charlotte, N.C., law firm’s files after they were locked up by a computer virus, WSOC reports.

Like other businesses in the city, the firm was targeted via email. Once an attachment was opened, the Crypto Locker virus took over. Thousands of documents stored on his computer

. . . [more]

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Linked Data Platform Working Group is working on “a specification [that] describes the use of HTTP for accessing, updating, creating and deleting resources from servers that expose their resources as Linked Data. It provides clarifications and extensions of the rules of Linked Data.” Last week they released Linked Data Platform Use Cases and Requirements. This new Working Group Note builds on the working draft they released in October 2013 and aims to “motivate a simple read-write Linked Data architecture” through a collection of stories and use cases.

We all love stories right? Unfortunately . . . [more]

Welcome Legal Sourcery from the Law Society of Saskatchewan Library to the law blog scene. They are posting several times a week on ” legal research tricks, interesting legal research news and what’s happening at the Library.”

Today they explain the blog name:

Putting our heads together and thinking creatively, we took a vote and decided to call this blog Legal Sourcery. Legal Sourcery is the expertise and capability we bring to legal research. It represents the multitude of legal resources we provide and the skills we use to wade through these resources.

So far they have pointed out interesting . . . [more]

The recent decision of the Supreme Court on summary hearings in the courts has sparked discussion within civil litigation circles, including on slaw.ca. But what, if anything, does the decision tell us about the court’s possible approach to summary processes in the administrative justice system?

The court appears to be open to new models of adjudication:

[t]he balance between procedure and access struck by our justice system must come to reflect modern reality and recognize that new models of adjudication can be fair and just.

The court also noted the importance of public adjudication of disputes for the development . . . [more]

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Michael Geist   2. ABlawg.ca   3. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog   4. Environmental Law and Litigation    5. Youth & Work

Google now lets you search a news archive that consists exclusively, it seems, of newspaper archives, digital or scanned, provided they aren’t held behind a paywall. This may have been available before now, but I’ve only become aware of it today. And I have to say that for anyone seeking to inquire into the last hundred years or so, this is a treasure trove. Google doesn’t say how many newspapers are in the database, but I count something like 120 beginning with “A” alone (among which is a plentiful supply of Canadian publications). For each publication, you’re told how many . . . [more]

This week's summaries concern: Expert evidence / Retroactive maintenance / Stay of proceedings:

On one Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, SupremeAdvocacyLett@r, to which you may subscribe.

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (Feb. 13 – Mar. 14, 2014 inclusive).

APPEALS

Criminal Law: . . . [more]

L'accusé savait qu'il était séropositif et il a sciemment tu ce fait au plaignant, avec lequel il a eu une relation sexuelle non protégée, contaminant ce dernier, qui, depuis, est devenu séropositif également; reconnu coupable d'agression sexuelle grave, il voit le verdict confirmé en appel.

Yesterday we concluded the Third Annual UCLA Cyber Crime Moot Court Competition in Los Angeles. This year the moot problem dealt with access of a public website through a scraper program to collect e-mail addresses for the purposes of illustrating security vulnerabilities.

The first issue in the case was roughly modelled after United States v. Auernheimer, 2012 WL 5389142 (D.N.J. 2012), which is expected to appear before the Third Circuit in the near future. In this case, a data breach at AT&T resulted in the theft of personal information of approximately 120,000 AT&T customers through the use of a . . . [more]

Last month saw the collapse of a foundational member of the Bitcoin community, Mt. Gox. A class action lawsuit, that will likely be one of many, has been filed in Illinois against former the bitcoin exchange industry leader, its parent companies, and Mark Karpeles, Mt. Gox’s sole director (Gregory Greene v Mt. Gox Incet al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 14-01437). The exchange has filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and, subsequent to the institution of class action proceedings, in the United States as well.

Although the bankruptcy filing temporarily suspends the class action, . . . [more]