Judgment in the biggest trial in UK history was rendered on 31 August after being reserved for seven months. The claim by Boris Berezovsky against Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich (owner of the Chelsea football club) for damages of $5 billion was dismissed.

In part Berezovksy claimed that Abramovich used intimidatory threats to coerce Berezovsky into selling his interest in the Sibneft oil company at a price that was substantially undervalued. He also alleged that Abramovich breached a shareholders’ agreement concerning an aluminum business RusAl, causing damages.

Here is an executive summary of the judgment.

There was apparently little or no . . . [more]

You only get one chance to make a first impression, as the saying goes. A recent study has confirmed that first impressions are persistent and can be difficult to overcome. The opening statement of the adjudicator and of the parties at the beginning of a hearing is that first impression and will often set the tone for the entire proceeding.

In crafting any communication, the first question to answer is, “who is your audience?” In many cases there are primary and secondary audiences. For an adjudicator, the primary audience is the parties to the dispute. The secondary audience for the . . . [more]

Robb Gary Evans, a police officer in Arizona, drove to a bar, flashed his badge to avoid paying entry, and downed eight beers. He then proceeded to sexually assault one of the patrons, and when he was tossed out of the bar he threatened to have the bouncers arrested.

Following an internal investigation Evans was fired from the police force. He was also convicted by a jury for sexual assault and sentenced for two years probation. I’ve made the minute entries from the case available here.

Despite the disturbing nature of the facts, this case takes an even stranger . . . [more]

It’s the average number of references per year, in reported cases, to my text Apportionment of Fault in Tort, in the 32 years years since it was published: 61 in total based on Carswell and CanLII. (I didn’t check on QL to see if there are some others.) On the other hand, there were only 6 in the first decade, but there’s been 30 in the past 10 years so I must be on a roll. Of course, most of them are in cases quoting other cases, but a reference is a reference, is a reference.

The thing has . . . [more]

There’s something of a slow motion bun fight going on at the high table of the US legal world. The spat started a long time ago. In fact, it’s origin is probably lost in the mists of time like the sources of animosity between the Houses of Slytherin and Gryffindor, having to do, as it does, with the correct way to extract meaning from a written document. No one could be wronger than the person on the other side of the interpretation divide, whatever it may be; and feelings run hotest when the document in question is a quasi-sacred document . . . [more]

According to Steptoe and Johnson’s E-Commerce Law Week,

The U.S. Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and NASA last month proposed a change to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) that would require contractors to safeguard their information systems containing information provided by or generated for the government. The proposed rule … would require government contracts with all federal contractors and appropriate subcontractors to mandate basic information security measures.

Is this a good idea?

In particular, should Canadian governments be concerned about the security of the IT systems in place among businesses that contract with them? If so, should . . . [more]

Normally, I am loath to repeat a post here at Slaw but seeing as how this is the first week of Law Skool I feel like this is an appropriate one to repeat for all of the 1Ls out there whose heads are, in all likelihood, spinning right now following their first four days as a law student.

Orientation week is drawing to a close. 2L and 3L classes have begun with 1L to begin on Monday. To all 1Ls, here is my advice. I know that not all who have experienced law school will agree with these and that’s . . . [more]

A very witty Master of the Alberta Supreme Court once wrote:

[51] Any legal system which has a judicial appeals process inherently creates a pecking order for the judiciary regarding where judicial decisions stand on the legal ladder.

[52] I am bound by decisions of Queen’s Bench judges, by decisions of the Alberta Court of Appeal and by decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. Very simply, Masters in Chambers of a superior trial court occupy the bottom rung of the superior courts judicial ladder.

[53] I do not overrule decisions of a judge of this court. The judicial pecking

I have a memory that might be described as variable. On the one hand I’m lousy when it comes to remembering when things happened in my past. Oh, I can tell you that I lived in D.C. before I came to Toronto, but if you press me for dates, I’d have to gaze into the middle distance and try to come up with clues as to the years (months are long gone). So I can remember social things in rough order but can’t really map them onto a timeline.

On the other hand, I can tell you exactly what you’ll . . . [more]

Is that the sound of your life being eaten away by the trojan called work, infiltrating our personal time via portable devices? Or is it the sound of forgotten files? Hopefully, it is you conveniently dealing with work on your terms.

Lawyers have had a long list of tools to help with getting things done. One of the first was the ToDo button, the brainchild of Peter Hart of Legalware with his Project Modeler in 1986. Inspired by this, it became the trade marked Do button in another Practice Management System (PMS).

Now there is no shortage of ToDo tools . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

Image: 3d Studio UK . . . [more]