In the wake of the 150 illnesses at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) recently, you’d think the Cronut is a name that vendors would avoid like the staphylococcus aureus toxin plague.

From the outset the Cronut name has been closely protected by its inventors in Soho, New York. Dominique Ansel Bakery, which created the Cronut in May 2013, has provided legal notices to American bakeries selling products with the same name, and they were not pleased when Toronto’s Le Dolci Bakery and Epic Burger announced they would be selling their dish at the CNE.

But Dominique Ansel may have other . . . [more]

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

THE OWNERS, STRATA PLAN BCS 3699 v. 299 BURRARD DEVELOPMENT INC., 2013 BCCA 356

1. CASE SUMMARY

Areas of Law: Real Property; Allocation of Shared Expenses; Disclosure of Documents

~No obligation of owner developer for continuing disclosure under Strata Property Act, S.B.C. 1998, c. 43~

Background: The Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel and Residences (the “Fairmont”) is a mixed commercial, hotel and residential condominium complex on Vancouver’s downtown waterfront. The . . . [more]

 You can’t turn around these days without bumping into discussion of MOOC—massive open online courses. At the latest ACLEA (the Association for Continuing Legal Education) meeting, MOOC were the subject of the final plenary. Often the final session of this conference is sparsely attended or wrapped up early in favour of the cocktail hour. This time, though, it was one of the very best sessions; the audience, made up of continuing legal education professionals from across North America and overseas, paid close attention throughout and followed up with many questions.

Our speaker was Tanina Rostain of Georgetown Law. She did . . . [more]

It helps to have a set of “just so” stories, in order that we can find, grasp and share data somewhat more easily. The Roman alphabet is one such “story,” for example. Almost everyone can recite it, so we can hunt through an alphabetized list of words quite swiftly. And I guess in a way our numbers are another handy “accepted structure” for managing information in the world, so accepted in fact that they seem to be a part of the world rather than a construct. These and other like inventions can be compared to maps, which, after all, are . . . [more]

Is there a reason some lawyers are scared at the idea of Legal Project Management?

Actually, I’ve heard numerous reasons since I wrote the book introducing the subject:

• It will take away our autonomy.
• It will introduce too much bureaucracy.
• Legal work doesn’t follow a formula.
• I don’t understand it.

To the lawyer who once offered that last explanation, I thank you for your honesty. What we don’t understand can be scary, intimidating even. But in Legal Project Management everything is exposed, shared, open, and available.

As for the other reasons… I’ll get to them in a minute.

Dark Rides . . . [more]

The debate over access to justice isn’t only on the agenda here in Canada (see the recent Slaw.ca posts entitled CBA’s Map to Equal Justice and CBA Access to Justice Report Is More Pie-in-the-Sky).

In 2011, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) produced a series of 27 Country thematic studies on access to justice:

“The national thematic studies constituted the background information drawn on by the FRA in order to compile its comparative report on ‘Access to justice in Europe: an overview of challenges and opportunities’. The summaries provide further details on the national situation in

. . . [more]

[Here are the cases that were unavailable yesterday.]

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. Marine Services International Ltd. v. Ryan Estate 2013 SCC 4
   

   [1] The sea took the lives of two fishermen off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Their estates sought compensation in tort from parties allegedly responsible for their death. This appeal raises the issue of whether the statutory bar of action in s. 44 of

. . . [more]

Last week I visited the newly created Corktown Common. For those readers familiar with Toronto, it’s a new urban park that sits on the west bank of the Don River, just south of King Street – on lands that 25 years ago, were considered to be irredeemable industrial wasteland. Plans to revitalize the site as the Atiritari housing project never got off the ground for a variety of reasons – cost of environmental remediation being one, and lack of a burning platform another. It’s human nature not to do anything unless we absolutely have to. So it was only when . . . [more]

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper asks the Governor General to prorogue Parliament before its scheduled return on September 16, 2013, and will mark the end of the 41st Parliament; consequently several pieces of legislation will die on the order paper in either the House of Commons or the Senate.

One of the fascinations of electronic communications is how they make many traditional questions of law new again. What is the nature of consent? Can one make an agreement with a machine (a computer)? How permanently must information be recorded before it can be considered ‘writing’? What is an original document? (Can one version of identical assemblies of bits usefully be called an original?) Where do instantaneous online transactions occur? And what is a signature?

Everybody knows that signatures are important. Children learn at an early age that signing something makes it special. We all sign a variety of documents . . . [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.

Electronic Signatures in Law, 3rd Edition
Stephen Mason
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Excerpts chosen by the author: pp.229-231; 318-322

[Footnotes converted to endnotes and renumbered.]

Statute of Frauds

The question arose in the English case of J Pereira Fernandes SA v. Mehta[1] whether the name forming part of an e-mail address . . . [more]

The summer’s blue moon has come and gone, the evenings are decidedly chilly (here), and sunrise wakes me at an ever more humane hour.

And another sign of autumn’s impending arrival: Planning the fine points of our first-year Legal Research and Writing course occupies a large share of mental space.

Clearly others are also pondering LRW ideas at the moment. The season and a bit of serendipity brought to my screen an interesting question from Dean Kim Brooks of Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie:

Thinking about revisions to LRW – anything you wish you'd learned in first year LRW?

. . . [more]