The Blue Mountain case, which was previously summarized by Yosie when the Divisional Court decision was released, was overturned earlier this month by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Justice Blair held that the OLRB and Divisional Court interpretation of s. 51(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, which requires reporting of workplace injuries and deaths, would render virtually every place in Ontario a “workplace,” simply because a worker may at some time be present. 

The intervenors, Conservation Ontario and Tourism Industry Association of Ontario, had argued that an end-risks analysis without a reasonable connection between a risk . . . [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:
Sovereign immunity / Expert evidence / Parental benefits under EI / Metis fishing rights / Questions by criminal jury / Insurance claim and limitations / Intervenors added on appeal / Equality and matrimonial property:

Steen et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran et al. 2013 ONCA 30
International Law – Sovereignty – Incidents of . . . [more]

What follows is the sole responsibility of the author. The opinion(s) do not represent, implicitly or explicitly, the positions, policies, or opinions of Slaw or any other institution that I am in any way remotely attached to…. heck I don’t know if the opinions herein reflect that of anybody else period; however, deep breath…. I, Mark Lewis am a supporter of the Canadian Senate… there I said it!

I am not a supporter of feeding at the pork barrel but I am unwilling to throw the baby out with the bath water. The Canadian Senate was designed to serve a . . . [more]

Dear new grad:

Welcome to Libraryland. I enjoyed our conversation at the OLA reception in January – your energy and eagerness were wonderful to see. I also appreciate your concerns about your career, and especially this first step. Landing the first job can be tough, and it takes a lot of fortitude to get through the dry spell that proceeds that first day on the job.

Of course, I was particularly pleased that you are attracted to a career in law libraries. I have worked in legal environments of one kind or another for many years, and have found the . . . [more]

An article in the Globe and Mail earlier this week got me thinking about the names that drug companies give to their products. The article talks about diclofenac, a commonly prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that some researchers believe is quite dangerous. As odd ad the word “diclofenac” is, it was the even stranger name of a similar drug that really made me wonder: “etoricoxib”.

What is going on? Who could coin such a monstrosity, and more to the point, why would they? I picture a big pharma Eden, where some utterly exhausted Adam, strung out on caffeine and out-of-date benzedrine, is . . . [more]

For my first column of this year, I had first thought to compile a “top ten” list of major issues currently confronting law libraries and librarians. As I started work on the list, two things quickly became clear to me: first, the column’s space constraints would allow only the most cursory treatment of the ten issues; and second, it was becoming more and more obvious that almost all ten issues were related to or even driven by one great issue. That issue is library costs and the shrinking budgets with which we are expected to cover them. Law schools continue . . . [more]

Legal philosopher and public intellectual died yesterday: February 14, 2013. He was 81.

It’s fitting that leading U.K. – the Guardian – and U.S. – the N.Y. Times – obituaries present different pictures of him, even to the extent of seemingly disagreeing on which of his books and other writing was the most important and on his significance in the world of legal and moral philosophy.

For example, the central paragraphs about his legal philosophy in the Guardian’s obituary are:

His books were immensely influential, especially in US law schools. He published many articles both in technical law journals and

. . . [more]

Scholarly publisher bepress recently launched The Digital Commons Network that “brings together scholarship from hundreds of universities and colleges, providing open access to peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work” [About page]

One of the subsets is the Law Network, which already has more than 100,000 articles from 170 institutions. The institutions all seem to be U.S. universities.

It is possible to sign up for free to follow all new legal scholarship, content in a specific practice area, from a specific institution or author.

This appears to be an interesting complement . . . [more]

We're proud to announce that four new lawyers have joined the roster of columnists, who write for Slaw in particular areas.

On February 7, 2013, LegalForce opened up a three-level retail store called BookFlip, in Palo Alto, California, that sells books, holds classes and connects customers with attorneys for legal advice.

We all know that person who constantly sends emails that lack a subject line. Or who sends rambling, lengthy emails that don’t seem to have a point. And there are those who send emails with open ended questions that require a game of email ping pong. You would never do any of those things – would you?

Sending a clear, concise and actionable email is the best way to get a proper response. Here are five ways to make sure your recipients open, read, and respond to your messages.

1.) Make the Subject Count

In Barbara Mento’s book Pyramid Principle . . . [more]

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt 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.

The Future of the Future H. Patrick Glenn 2. The Concept of the Future and Its Possible Decline We know the future in opposition to the past, and the future is therefore present as the ultimate destination in a linear progression from the (even distant or 'deep') past through the present (always with us) to the future.