Costa Concordia: A Sea of Suits The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from England to New York City. The ship sank on April 15, 1912. History repeated itself nearly 100 years later when the Costa Concordia hit a rock off the Coast of Italy and sunk on January 13, 2012. As [...]

On May 26, 2011, the international publication The Economist featured an article about moose in Canada. In particular, they focused on moose in Newfoundland and Labrador. These “lumbering giants” are wreaking havoc on the roads, resulting in over 700 collisions every year, many of which are fatal. Having no natural predators, their population has soared [...]

Over the holidays, in a series of concurrently released decisions, the Supreme Court of Canada considered how a citizen could sue the Crown to financially recover on a wrong committed by an administrative decision maker. The question before the Court was whether one may bring the action directly, or did the lawfulness of the Crown’s [...]

The tragic case of a father killing his estranged family, then himself, underlies the SCC’s recent decision in de Montigny v. Brossard (Succession), 2010 SCC 51. In this case, the SCC allowed punitive damages in the absence of a deterrent effect. This case marks a turning point in how courts are to rationalize punitive awards. [...]

Ontario employers can rest easy as a result of the Ontario Court of Appeal’s recent decision in Piresferreira v. Ayotte, 2010 ONCA 384.  The appeal revisited the issue of an employer’s duty to protect an employee against mental suffering in the workplace. The Court of Appeal held that restricting an employee’s ability to hold an [...]

The Supreme Court will hear a series of seven appeals later this week to clarify a mess of case law that has grown around the juicy-sounding doctrine of collateral attack. (Coincidentally, 24 premieres this week, though I don’t expect Jack Bauer to have any involvement in this particular saga.) The fact that the Court has [...]

As the federal and provincial governments rolled out their vaccination programs for H1N1 flu last week, health ministers, doctors, and other government representatives have all been answering questions about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. There has recently been much debate about the wisdom and effectiveness of population-wide vaccination: for example, see this month’s cover story [...]

On October 1st, 2009, the Ontario Court of Appeal released its judgment in Sutts, Strosberg LLP v. Atlas Cold Storage Holdings Inc., 2009 ONCA 690. The significance of this case lies in its status as one of the few securities class actions in Canada. One counsel submitted that this “was the third largest securities class [...]

Over the past two decades, academics and judges have debated the issue of awarding damages for violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the absence of mala fides. It took the threat of a dessert ambush to get the matter to the SCC. Back in June, leave to appeal was granted for [...]

On June 12, 2009, the Alberta Court of Appeal released its much-awaited insurance cap decision in Morrow v. Zhang, 2009 ABCA 215. In 2004, the province of Alberta passed legislation, the Minor Injury Regulation, AR 123/2004 (MIR), which imposed a $4,000 cap on non-pecuniary damages for “minor injuries” as defined under the MIR. The Alberta [...]