In-House Counsel
-
May 16, 2024
OSC reports $300,000 payment to whistleblower
In a brief announcement, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has reported recently paying $300,000 to a whistleblower who played a key role in helping the regulator uncover misconduct.
-
May 16, 2024
B.C. court rules lessor cannot sue lessee after seizing collateral motorcycle
The B.C. Court of Appeal has ruled that a lessor who seized a lessee’s motorcycle for default could not sue the lessee over unpaid lease payments, rejecting claims that a security agreement estopped the lessee from submitting that the motorcycle was a consumer good.
-
May 15, 2024
Alberta court proving schedule C not obsolete
In the last few years, successful litigants in Alberta’s superior courts have frequently argued that they should be awarded partial indemnity costs in the amount of 40 – 50 per cent of their actual solicitor-client costs.
-
May 15, 2024
130-year-old Kingston firm welcomes new associate
After graduating from Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law and articling in Nova Scotia, Sean Davidson is returning to his hometown of Kingston, Ont., to join Cunningham Swan Carty Little & Bonham LLP as an associate on the firm’s general litigation team.
-
May 14, 2024
Labour tribunal rules method to conduct pay equity audit is invalid
A method used to estimate wage differentials during pay equity evaluations cannot be validly used as it contravenes the Quebec Pay Equity Act, ruled the Administrative Labour Tribunal in a decision widely expected by labour lawyers to have a significant impact on estimating and assessing public sector pay equity.
-
May 14, 2024
What B.C. single-regulator recommendation means to legal independence | Michael D. Lucas
In December 2013, the Law Society of British Columbia made a recommendation that it should regulate not only lawyers but also notaries and other groups of limited-scope legal service providers who had met qualifications standards. The underlying policy rationale for the recommendation was that a single regulator could reconcile qualification processes, ethical standards and disciplinary systems to best assure that different groups of providers providing similar services would be properly qualified and similarly regulated. It was also possible that access to legal services could be improved by regulating new groups of providers under a single regulator, although the recommendations considered this to be speculative.
-
May 13, 2024
Court permits CN Railway to proceed with $250M container terminal project pending appeal
The Federal Court of Appeal has permitted the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) to continue construction of a $250 million intermodal container transfer facility in Milton, Ont., pending the outcome of an appeal concerning the government decision authorizing the project.
-
May 13, 2024
Dancing with the devil: Benefits managers and pharmacies
Ontario pharmacists have multiple and often competing responsibilities. Beyond their clinical duties, many pharmacists are business owners, employers, mentors and teachers. However, their primary duty is always to the public. Unfortunately, Ontario pharmacists are increasingly being subjected to pressures that seemingly bear no relationship to their ability to serve the public and which threaten to shift the focus within the profession from patient-centred care to commercial concerns.
-
May 13, 2024
Family Legal Services Provider program starting January 2025 | Michelle Lomazzo
On Dec. 1, 2022, The Law Society of Ontario (LSO) convocation voted in favour of a Family Legal Services Provider (FLSP) licence for licensed paralegals. Since then, Fanshawe College has been selected as the approved and only online provider of the FLSP program. The FLSP program is now in development and Fanshawe will begin offering the program starting in January 2025.
-
May 10, 2024
Supreme Court of Canada clarifies how to assess compensation for constructive expropriation
The Supreme Court of Canada has explained how to assess compensation payable for constructive expropriation of private land by public authorities in a unanimous decision that reverses a ruling below that pegged what the City of St. John’s owes to a property owner to the land’s prospective market value if it were permitted to be developed for residential use, rather than to its much lower market value as land which is currently zoned “watershed,” with only limited discretionary agriculture, forestry and public utility uses.