At the Court  is a biweekly feature profiling appeals that are scheduled to be heard at the Supreme Court of Canada. R v DC and R v Mabior: Revising Cuerrier? The Supreme Court will be revisiting the highly contentious Cuerrier decision on February 8 when it hears R v DC and R v Mabior together. [...]

June 2011 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the first reported cases of HIV/AIDS in the United States, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton commemorated the sombre occasion by recalling the disease’s history. In her remarks on June 5, Clinton noted that in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, “the world was shocked [...]

As someone who came of age in the late 90s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the past decade was always omnipresent. No sex ed. class was complete without a candid discussion about HIV transmission, and the importance of practicing safe sex. But even though HIV was always a part of the conversation, I frankly felt a [...]

Today, the Supreme Court of Canada will release judgment in Co-operators Life Insurance Company v. Gibbens, 2008 BCCA 153, an interesting case hinging on the proper interpretation of an insurance policy. I concede that issues surrounding insurance law may not seem terribly interesting at first rub, but the respondent’s extraordinary circumstances give rise to a number [...]

Moving Beyond the Unilateral Duty Last week, I broadly surveyed the benefits and detriments flowing from R. v. Cuerrier, [1998] 2. S.C.R. 371, the case enabling the Crown to prosecute sero-positive individuals who fail to disclose an HIV transmission risk. While Cuerrier’s “duty to disclose” does serve the social imperative that express misrepresentations of serostatus [...]

Criminalizing Non-Disclosure, Cuerrier and Beyond In September 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R. v. Cuerrier, [1998] 2. S.C.R. 371 that disclosure of sero-positive status is required to legally validate consent in sexual relations that pose a significant risk of transmitting HIV. What has followed is a lengthy series of HIV-related prosecutions, numbering [...]