ADMS 3420: Employment Law (Doorey)

Handout 3

 

How to Read a Legal Citation and Decision

 

We will read cases from a large variety of courts and tribunals.  There are differences in the ways the decisions are reported and presented, but there is a common theme in the formatting.  (See also the textbook, p. 20)

 

Consider first the Bhadauria decision from Week 2.   It looks like this:

 

Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology v. Bhadauria

 

[1981] 2 S.C.R. 181 (S.C.C.)

 

Present: Laskin C.J. and Dickson, Beetz, Estey, McIntyre,

 

Chouinard and Lamer JJ.

 

 

The first line is the name of the case.  Seneca College is the party that is bringing the case forward.  If the case is at the first level of court, the party named first is called the Plaintiff, while the other party is the Defendant.   When the decision is an appeal case, challenging a lower court’s decision, the first party listed is called the Appellant (the party that is appealing the earlier decision), and the other party is called the Respondent (the party responding to the appeal).   So in this case, which is an appeal, Seneca is the appellant, and Bhadauria is the respondent. 

 

I know it’s an appeal because the court is the Supreme Court of Canada, and the  SCC only hears appeals.   The next line tells us where to find the published version of the decision in a library.

 

[1981]                         Year the case decided

2 S.C.R. 181               The decision can be found in volume 2, of the legal case reporter                                           book called the Supreme Court Reports (SCR), on page 181

 

(SCC)                          The name of the court will usually appear in brackets at the end of                                         the citation in abbreviation form

 

Following that is the names of the Supreme Court judges who decided the case.  There were 7 of them hearing this case.   Only the Supreme Court has this many judges on one case.  The Court of Appeal usually has three judges on a case, while lower courts will only have one judge deciding.