Tensions can run high during political demonstrations, and police are often deployed to monitor the situation and prevent an escalating conflict. In doing so, police have a common law power to arrest individuals when they believe an arrest may prevent a breach of the peace without the requirement that police believe that the person being […]
The Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) will hear Bela Kosoian, a woman arrested in a Quebec subway station for failing to hold an escalator handrail. Leave was granted on Thursday, November 15. I will discuss the background, legal framework, and procedural history of this case – which was recently featured in headlines internationally—before offering some […]
This case is a follow-up to TheCourt.ca’s previous analysis of this case when it was first heard before the Supreme Court of Canada in January of 2018. For many first-year law students, their introduction to tort law is rooted in the seminal British case Anns v Merton London Borough Council, [1978] AC 728 [Anns] and its Canadian […]
As the extensive reach of the Internet continues to blur borders, so too are issues of legal jurisdiction increasingly entwined. Courts are now frequently called upon to reconcile a once novel question: are our current laws still appropriate in a digital age? The rise of the Internet particularly challenges Canadian courts to determine when they […]
On December 20, 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada (the “Court”) released Deloitte & Touche v Livent Inc., 2017 SCC 63 [Livent], a decision in which the Court refined the framework for analyzing a defendant’s duty of care in cases of negligent misrepresentation of performance of a service. This decision has far-reaching consequences for auditors, […]
Does an owner of a garage owe a duty of care to teenagers who steal and drive the garage’s serviced cars? On October 5, 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) heard submissions on this unusual question in the case of James Chadwick Rankin cob Rankin’s Garage & Sales v JJ by his Litigation Guardian, […]
In first year law school, we learn the seven parts of a tort claim: volition, duty of care, standard of care, harm, causation, remoteness, defence. Some learn these in different orders, some apply them in separate steps, and others apply multiple steps at one time during their analysis. Causation, however, has always been a main […]
Last year, TheCourt.ca posted an article discussing the fatal impaired driving incident that resulted in the death of all three of Jennifer and Edward Neville-Lake’s children. Daniel, Harrison and Milly were all under the age of ten. Jennifer’s father Gary—the children’s grandfather—was also killed in the crash. The sole survivors were their grandmother and great-grandmother, […]
Due to a dearth of commercial appellate decisions around the holiday season, a tort decision from the Ontario Divisional Court has caught my attention. Swern v Amazon Hardwood Centre Inc, 2015 ONSC 7590 [Swern] is a Small Claims Court decision appealed by the Defendants to the Divisional Court on a number of well-reasoned points of […]
In Stilwell v World Kitchen Inc, 2014 ONCA 770, the appellants, World Kitchen Inc. ("World Kitchen") and Corning Inc. ("Corning") appealed a jury award of $1,157,850 for negligence relating to product liability. In the result, the Court of Appeal affirmed that a significant degree of deference is owed to civil jury awards.