PRODUCING HUMAN RESOURCE DEPARTMENT DOCUMENTS
One thing I love about being a litigation lawyer, even a somewhat old and specialized one like me, is that there is always something new in the case law that can greatly impact Superior Court wrongful or constructive dismissal litigation. In Superior Court litigation, each party has to produce a sworn affidavit of documents and […]
Criminal law- sentencing in the era of Covid 19
Normally, courts and law generally, are about 10 years behind the times. Not so with Covid 19. There is a stated and an unstated reason why courts are considering the realities of Covid 19 in sentencing decisions. The stated reason is that jails and prisons have become even more dangerous than before to inmates, particularly […]
Civility in the legal profession- small town style
The Covid 19 crisis has brought out the best in the legal profession. I have seen some small town high tech firms offer their help to their cross town rivals in closing real estate deals. I have seen criminal lawyers in small towns agree to handle everyone’s adjournment of criminal matters, so other defence lawyers […]
One less tort, and one new tort
As society changes, courts struggle to adapt. Trial courts (through the advocacy efforts of counsel) will sometimes create a new tort in their written decision in a civil litigation case. Usually they will do that in conjunction with their decision regarding other, well established torts. For example, a trial court a few years ago, created […]
Camporose case, private investigators beware
This interesting case has failed to lead to any learned legal articles in the trade papers that I have seen and I must say; I am shocked. The background to the case is that a wife thought her husband was cheating on her (oldest story in law). She hired a private investigation firm to […]
SLAPP and Employment law
I would like to comment on an interesting recent Ontario case involving the intersection of 3 areas of law: Employment law Defamation law Public policy/procedural law The case is Joshi v Allstate Insurance. Ms. Joshi sued Allstate for alleged wrongful dismissal and included some claims in lawsuit about alleged Human Rights Code […]
Showdown at the Law Society of Ontario
There is a showdown pending at the Law Society of Ontario that mirrors two opposing philosophies that one can see from watching geopolitical events around the world. The establishment folks, whom one might loosely call the Obama or Trudeau social engineering types, who have, over time, created a large staff at the Law Society and […]
Criminal law- drugs and preliminary inquiries
I have had a chance to review the new restriction buried in the CDSA about having the Health Canada analyst attend at the preliminary inquiry to testify about his/her sampling methods. I was shocked that there was no case law about when a judge at a pre-hearing should order such an attendance, as compared to […]
On TV: Pitblado featured in Commercial
You may have seen us on TV lately! We wanted to share our feature in a collaborative commercial that was put together by our local Business Improvement Association, the Hyde Park BIA. We hope you enjoy this theatrical extension, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have a employment and criminal law case […]
Money Talks
I noted, with great approval, that Doug Ford’s warnings to universities, is bearing fruit. Specifically, he publicly told them that unless they adopted policies favouring “free speech on campus” he would cut their funding, starting in January. I noticed that UWO came out with such a sensible policy last week. Money talks.