On September 17, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ("OCA") released its decision for Société Air France v. NAV Canada, 2010 ONCA 598, ordering production of the Air France Flight 358 aircraft’s "cockpit voice recorder" ("CVR") to the litigation parties. The CVR was previously held under statutory privilege. The decision confirmed the order made by […]
Do non-resident corporations carrying on business in Canada have to pay a penalty for failing to file an income tax return on time, even though no tax is owed? This question was answered in the affirmative by the Tax Court of Canada (pursuant to s. 162(2.1) of the Federal Income Tax Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. […]
Honest services fraud, pursuant to section 1346 of Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure, 63 U.S.C., is mail or wire fraud occurring within “a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” In Skilling v. United States 554 F. 3d 529 (2010) the USSC vacated the conviction of former […]
The Supreme Court of Canada has recently announced it will hear Craig Bartholomew Legare v. Her Majesty the Queen on October 15, a week from today. The case concerns a 32 year old male who was charged with luring a child by means of a computer system and of an invitation to sexual touching. The […]
Last Friday, the Supreme Court delivered its ruling in R. v. Jaw, 2009 SCC 42, the second in so many months considering the potentially prejudicial effects of erroneous jury instructions. The issues on appeal and holding of the court are not the most compelling, both being construed rather narrowly to a specific set of facts. The […]
On Wednesday, TheCourt.ca published a student post on the Supreme Court's decision to grant leave to appeal to R. v. Caron. Today we publish a second piece on Caron, which was intended to be published earlier but a glitch in our process caused a delay. It is important to note that the following comment was […]
On August 27th, the SCC granted the Alberta government leave to appeal in R. v. Caron, 2009 ABCA 34. Chief Justice McLachlin, Justice Abella and Justice Rothstein granted the leave application without costs and without reasons. Nevertheless, it seems absurd that making an unsafe left turn has turned into a four year long engagement with […]
Recently issuing judgment in R. v. Craig, 2009 SCC 23 and companion cases R. v. Ouellette, 2009 SCC 24 and R. v. Nguyen, 2009 SCC 25, the Supreme Court of Canada has circumscribed the applicability of the forfeiture provisions for real property related to a designated substance offence under sections 16(1) and 19.1(3) of the […]
My colleague Julian Ho has already provided a succinct summary of last Thursday's Supreme Court decision in Lipson v Canada, 2009 SCC 1 [Lipson], so today I thought I'd comment briefly on the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) and the Court's adoption of a purposive approach in determining whether a transaction or series of transaction is abusive. […]
On Friday the Supreme Court of Canada pronounced on R v JF, [2008] 3 SCR 215, a criminal case concerned with child abuse, manslaughter and inconsistent verdicts. The issue before the Court was whether an accused could, on the one hand, be convicted of criminal negligence for not protecting a child from physical abuse and, […]