Articles 2021

Assistant Crown Attorney Benjamin Janzen provides helpful tips for counsel assisting individuals with guilty pleas to provincial offences.

Crown Attorney Erin Pancer provides an overview of the Dark Web and the role of cryptocurrency in facilitating the purchase of drugs and firearms.

Lisa Jørgensen provides a helpful refresher on the law of voluntariness, with a focus on recent Court of Appeal and Superior Court jurisprudence.

Lynda Morgan summarizes the Supreme Court of Canada's recent significant judgment in R. v. Reeves, respecting the effect of the consent of a co-owner or third party to the police seizure of a computer.

There were only two substantive civil decisions of the Court of Appeal this week. Most notably, in Heller v Uber Technologies Inc., the Court revived a proposed class action by Uber drivers against Uber. Justice Perrell had stayed the class proceeding on jurisdictional grounds in favour of Uber’s arbitration clause requiring all disputes to be arbitrated in the Netherlands. The Court determined that the arbitration clause was invalid and unenforceable.

In PQ Licensing S.A. v. LPQ Central Canada Inc., the Ontario Court of Appeal considered whether the mandatory mediation process prescribed by a franchise agreement impacted the limitation period applicable to a franchisee’s rescission claim.  The Court found that the franchisee’s claim for rescission was not barred even though the franchisee had delivered its notice of rescission nearly a decade prior.

The question of money is central to all firms – new or established. Without cash flow, you can’t make your overhead; you can’t pay your salaries; you can’t invest in marketing initiatives or take advantage of expansion opportunities. And so, when lawyers begin thinking about a new practice - along with choosing a name, a logo, finding a location, researching software tools and setting out a marketing plan - they must also think of the fees they will charge.

The CBA has been actively working towards undoing the injustice done to late Justice Gerald Le Dain. Addressing mental concerns of legal professionals is the need of the hour. In fact, the Law Society of Ontario’s Mental Health Strategy Task Force has included mental health initiatives as a strategic priority for the 2015-19 governing term.

There was only one substantive civil decision, Lauzon v Fortier, a family law decision. The Court refused to interfere with the trial judge’s exercise of discretion that the husband be paid his equity by the wife immediately (even if that meant the wife might have to sell the matrimonial home), and that the husband make his equalization payment to his wife by way of a spousal rollover of his pension.

Solo practice is increasingly the preferred alternative for the millennial lawyer.