A small groundswell of citizens in High River, Alberta are noting their objections to the actions of the RCMP during an emergency flood this past June. In a meeting this week with the RCMP the residents question why searches by the military and RCMP resulted in property damage and seizure of firearms. The RCMP justify their actions by stating they were conducting searches of the homes to ensure no residents or pets were left behind during the evacuation.

The RCMP has the authority under s. 487.11 of the Criminal Code to enter homes to save lives. But their authority at . . . [more]

This week's summaries concern: Construction of wills / Aboriginal treaty rights / Regulation of drug sales via the internet / Small claims court and set off:

Lucy McSweeney, the Children’s Lawyer for Ontario, joins this years list of individuals being recognized as Leaders to be Proud Of and champions of diversity by Out on Bay Street. Lucy received this year’s Professional Leadership Award.

Lucy McSweeney was appointed by the Ontario Government as the Children’s Lawyer for Ontario in 2010. The Office of the Children’s Lawyer is part of Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General and provides legal services on behalf of children under the age of 18. The Office is unique as it offers the most comprehensive government-funded legal service to children in the world. The . . . [more]

Every so often you’ll see an article that declares that word x in language y is untranslatable into language z — this last almost always being English. The truth of it is that most of these statements are simply wrong and often show themselves to be wrong as they proceed to tell you what word x means in English. It is the case, of course, that we don’t always have a single word in English that serves the same function as the single word in the exotic language, so sometimes it takes us a few words to express pretty much . . . [more]

Whether you are starting your career, are mid-career or are winding down, you should take time to recharge. Ever since 1975, one of my favorite ways to refresh lagging enthusiasm for the rigors and routines of work has been to go to the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). In the early days I was energized by meeting new people and learning new skills. As the years rolled by, my excitement was in honing skills and in catching up with the many friends I made over the course of my career. Now that I am retired, . . . [more]

[We experienced trouble this week obtaining statistics in time to be published on Wednesday.] 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. Brooks (Re) 2013 CanLII 54306 (ON RC)
   

   1. This Ontario Racing Commission (ORC) Hearing as it now proceeds is in response to:

   • Written request by Jeffrey Brooks (Brooks) relating to Standardbred Ruling 23/2010 immediately suspending Jeffrey Brooks’ ORC licence G368T7 on January 28, 2010, Racing Commission Act 2000

. . . [more]

The most recent issue of the Weekly Checklist of Canadian Government Publications refers to a number of publications from the Canadian Judicial Council relating to court management and the management of case information.

They include papers on systems to manage digital court documents, the determination of costs in civil litigation involving digital information and e-discovery, as well as a comparative analysis of court administrative systems in Australia, Canada, England and Wales, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland:

• Court Information Management: “Traditionally, courts have relied on the availability of filed documents – both paper based or

. . . [more]

I had naively assumed that if you were pardoned for having committed, and being convicted of, a criminal offence, that was that: you and society were square and the slate was clean. An article in today’s Globe and Mail, “Ottawa revokes pardon for man accused in Via train plot” by Colin Freeze, disabused me of that notion. The truth of the matter is that the clearing of the record is conditional.

Under s.2.1 of the Criminal Records Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-47, the Parole Board of Canada “has exclusive jurisdiction and absolute discretion to order, refuse . . . [more]

Little has been written about the role of Legal IT Professionals in the law firm of the future. Most commentary has focussed on the law firm as a whole, or on the role of lawyers in the firm. So let me break from the mould.

We live in a world where corporate clients view “process” as just as important as lawyering. In other words, quality is a given and is expected by clients. For corporate clients, quality gets your foot in the door, but better processes will differentiate the firm and seal the deal. As a result, it is foolish . . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the entry into force of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was signed in Rome on November 1, 1950, by 12 member states of the Council of Europe, and came into force on September 3, 1953. The Convention was one of the first instruments to give effect and binding force to certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The disease that afflicted legal and professional publishing for the last two decades was corrosive on many levels.

The first symptom of the Digital obsession or Digitisis disease was the overspending on document structure definitions and an obsession with rescuing whole ‘limbs’ of content that were probably going to be amputated in due course anyway. No-one in Lexis, Thomson, Bloomberg-BNA or Wolters-Kluwer-CCH could agree on what future content should look like so they had no idea what to keep or discard. This indecision led to the lowest common denominator strategy of ‘digitise and it will be worth it . . . [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.

Corporate Crime and Civil Liability
Gordon Kaiser
Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2012

Introduction

The past 20 years have seen a dramatic increase in corporate crime (or at least the detection and prosecution of corporate crime) such that this area now concerns virtually all corporate lawyers. This concern is heightened by civil litigation that invariably . . . [more]