RSS FeedOntario Ombudsman
The office of Ontario Ombudsman is on Twitter and Facebook. The Ombudsman is a pretty unique independent oversight officer accountable directly to the provincial legislature. He investigates people’s complaints under the authority granted by the Ombudsman Act.
Add or follow the Ombudsman. It’s cool to see government trying to get on the social media bandwagon.
Official Launch of Law Enforcement Accountability Project (LEAP)
First post of three on projects at Windsor Law fighting racial discrimination
On February 5th, 2009, the Faculty of Law hosted the official launch of LEAP. LEAP is the first law school project of its kind in Canada. The event kicked off with an introduction and welcome by Dean Bruce Elman. Attendees at the launch were Justice Steven Rogin, Justice Saul Nosanchuk, and Justice Micheline Rawlins, city councilors from Windsor and Essex County, members of the Windsor Police Services Board, Director of Campus Police, members of the local bar and community, and faculty, staff, and students of the University.
Professor David M. Tanovich, Academic Director of LEAP, followed the introduction by discussing the purpose of LEAP and encouraging law students to get involved with the project. As a student-led research initiative at Windsor Law, the objective of LEAP is to provide confidential research on issues surrounding police accountability and racial profiling. This research will be provided to government, oversight agencies, community groups, human rights agencies, Universities, and police services. LEAP will also serve to increase public education and awareness, particularly in Windsor and Essex County, about issues surrounding the new police complaints process in Ontario.
LEAP’s website can be found at www.uwindsor.ca/law. The site will provide information about LEAP’s community outreach initiatives, the filing of a police complaint, relevant case law and reports surrounding issues of police accountability and racial profiling. A link to the LEAP blog is available on the site, but can also be found directly at www.windsorlaw-leap.blogspot.com. Everyone is encouraged to visit the blog and post comments to entice meaningful and thoughtful discussion.
Amy Slotek and Lindsay Trevelyan, Community Outreach Co-Ordinators, discussed the importance of engaging with members of the Windsor-Essex community to provide support surrounding issues of police accountability, racial profiling, and the new police complaints process. Slotek and Trevelyan will begin their community outreach programme at the start of March.
Lily Tekle, Student Director of LEAP, introduced keynote speaker Mr. Gerry McNeilly, Director of the Independent Police Review Board (IPRB). McNeilly discussed the implementation of Bill 103: An Act to establish an [IPRB] and create a new public complaints process by amending the Police Services Act. Under the legislation, he has the power to develop procedural aspects of the new system, the discretion to refuse complaints, and the jurisdiction to investigate systemic issues. Appointed to the position in 2008 by Attorney General Chris Bentley, McNeilly is an excellent candidate for the role given his experiences in public interest litigation and community work. At the conclusion of his address, he encouraged participants to feel comfortable enough to utilize the new system once it becomes available.
For further information, please do not hesitate to contact LEAP at leap@uwindsor.ca.
New IP Writing Award
The Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC) and IP Osgoode are
delighted to announce a new Canadian writing challenge in intellectual
property law. Submissions may be in French or in English.
To help advance such scholarship from within the classroom and beyond, we
have established three categories:
1. Law student category (LL.B, J.D., BCL, and LL.L students)
2. Graduate student category (LL.M, S.J.D. and PhD students)
3. Professional category (legal and business professionals who have been
practising 7 years or less, including patent agents and trade-mark agents)
We offer some exciting prizes. Each winner will be eligible for:
1. A prize of $1000 (CAD)
2. His/her work to be published on the IP Osgoode website (
www.iposgoode.ca )
3. Be considered for publication in the Canadian Intellectual Property
Review; and/or Osgoode Hall Review of Law and Policy (OHRLP) (
http://www.ohrlp.ca/ )
The deadline is Canada Day, Wednesday, July 1, 2009.
Writing challenge rules and further information are available at:
http://www.iposgoode.ca/writing-challenge/
The Law of Drunkenness
The Law of Drunkenness: You can’t fall off the floor
Photo Credit: Ashley Chontos in Korea
Government’s Case Against Resisters Faulty
The Harper government attempts to justify deporting U.S. Iraq War resisters with a familiar, but untrue, narrative.
They say that unlike during the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers are volunteers and are not considered refugees by the United Nations. They say refugee applications are evaluated fairly on their own merits, and there is no need to create a separate program for U.S. Iraq War resisters.
All these statements are false.
First, not all Vietnam War resisters were conscripts, and many Iraq War resisters are redeployed against their will. Vietnam War resisters included draft dodgers who fled before induction, those who accepted their draft notice and were inducted, and those who voluntarily joined the military services. After a brief political struggle in 1969 concerning those who came to Canada after induction, Canada welcomed both groups without distinction.
Although current war resisters volunteered and some completed their service, many found themselves involuntarily redeployed to Iraq. Programs of stop-loss and individual ready-reserve recall soldiers after they have been discharged. Many soldiers, such as Jeremy Hinzman, have had their applications for conscientious objector status denied.
Section 167 of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees’ Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status states that “a deserter or draft-evader may also be considered a refugee if it can be shown that he would suffer disproportionately severe punishment for the military offence on account of . . . political opinion.”
After being deported, war resister Robin Long was sentenced to 15 months in prison, the harshest punishment so far for resisting the Iraq war, partly because of his political statements about the war. Multiple Federal Court of Canada decisions have granted stays of removal on the grounds that U.S. war resisters who have spoken out against the war would suffer differential punishment.
Section 171 of the UNHCR Handbook states that “where the type of military action, with whom an individual does not wish to be associated, is condemned by the international community as contrary to basic rules of human conduct, punishment for desertion or draft-evasion could . . . in itself be regarded as persecution.”
This is precisely the position in which Iraq War resisters find themselves, refusing – as did Canada under Prime Minister Jean Chretien – to participate in a war condemned by the international community.
Second, while war resisters who have applied for refugee status may be treated the same as every other applicant, the government’s blanket opposition to war resisters as revealed in public comments by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney – who labeled them “bogus refugee claimants” – led the Canadian Council for Refugees to rebuke the minister because such a statement gives “the strong appearance of political interference” and “threatens claimants’ right to an unbiased decision.”
And to date, where U.S. war resisters have attempted to access the humanitarian and compassionate grounds application process, instead of their claims being decided fairly, the majority of these individuals have received negative decisions that are almost identical, word for word.
The final argument of the government is that they do not believe in creating a program to allow war resisters to apply for permanent residence. But the majority of Canadians do, and Parliament passed a motion to that effect last June, and again on Monday. Rather than listen to Parliament, the government has been deporting war resisters to punishment in the U.S., justifying government actions with a series of false arguments.
It is time for the Conservatives to stop making false claims and to start respecting the will of Parliament. Iraq War resisters should be allowed to apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada.
POSTED BY: Paul Copeland is a co-founder of the Law Union of Ontario, a previous co-president of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted and Life Bencher (director) of the Law Society of Upper Canada., London
POSTED ON: April 1, 2009
EDITORS NOTE: As published in The London Free Press on April 1, 2009, reproduced here with the author’s permission
Facebook: Internet’s Link Police
Recently, our beloved facebook has decided to start policing the links that are posted to its members’ profiles. Citing “controversies” and “ongoing lawsuits”, facebooks has unilaterally decided that links to The Pirate Bay are now banned.
Incidentally, this has nothing to do with the pirate bay and everything to do with facebook trying to impose its ethics on the wired world. The founders and operators of the pirate bay have not yet been convicted of any crimes in their home country (Sweden), and even in Canada, the legal status of file sharing remains in limbo. It also helps to remeber that not all content on trackers such as the pirate bay is copyrighted. A quick search on the websites reveals plenty of indie music, a plethora of open source software, and other public domain media.
What’s disturbing about this is that the administrators of facebook are using their clout to police the content of their users’ profiles. It’s one thing when a user is breaking a specific law, it’s another when the user is doing something that has not been ruled illegal. Facebook needs a gentle reminder that the internet is not there to be policed.
This blog entry would not be complete without a reminder to users of services such as facebook and the pirate bay to respect other peoples’ and companies’ intellectual property. If this respect was in the culture and codified in law, these problems would not occur. For now, any time you feel the need to be a software pirate, check here for a free and possibly better alternative. For music, movies and other media, substitution is a little more tricky, but that should not be a reason to break a law.
SCC: No Privacy Interest in Things We Throw Out
The Supreme Court of Canada today released its decision in R. v. Patrick, 2009 SCC 17, which concerns privacy interests in garbage and other abandoned items. The Court ruled that a police search of garbage abandoned at the curb does not require a warrant and can be done without violating the Charter.
Calgary police suspected that Mr. Patrick was operating an ecstacy lab in his house. Acting on this suspicion, the police attended at the house on six occaisions to retrieve and search through garbage bags, looking for any evidence of criminal activity.
The garbage bags had been placed inside garbage cans, which in turn had been left outside in a small shed for collection. The shed was on Mr. Patrick’s property, and the police had to reach over the property line to grab the bags.
As a result of these searches, police retrieved numerous incriminating pieces of evidence. The bags contained things like packaging for a digital scale, a receipt for muiatic acid, torn up chemical recipes, etc. Some of the items were contaminated with ecstacy.
Partly on the basis of the evidence collected in this way, the police were able to obtain a warrant to search Mr. Patrick’s home. After forcibly entering his home, they discovered precursor chemicals, scales, a pill press, and 2679 ecstacy pills.
Patrick argued that his section 8 Charter right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure had been violated.
The Court unanimously decided that it had not.
The central issue in the case was whether Patrick, by placing his garbage bags outside to be picked up by municipal garbage collection, had abandoned any interest in those bags.
Thus, the case was was essentially resolved as a property law question.
The majority cited R. v. Dyment, [1988] 2 S.C.R. 417 for the proposition that abandonment of an item automatically disposes of one’s privacy interest in that item:
In R. v. Dyment, [1988] 2 S.C.R. 417, La Forest J. treated abandonment as fatal to a reasonable expectation of privacy. He held that when an accused abandons something, it is “best to put it in Charter terms by saying that he [has] ceased to have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to it.”
[Patrick, at para. 22.]
Next, they cited R. v. Stillman, [1997] 1 S.C.R. 607 as standing for the same proposition:
In R. v. Stillman, [1997] 1 S.C.R. 607, McLachlin J., in dissent, but not on this point, stated that “[t]he purpose of s. 8 is to protect the person and property of the individual from unreasonable search and seizure. This purpose is not engaged in the case of property which the accused has discarded.”
[Patrick, at para. 23.]
A finding that an accused person has abandoned an item seems, therefore, to be dispositive of any section 8 claim about that item. That’s a pretty narrow view of privacy.
Ironically, in Stillman, the seizure of a discarded tissue was held to have breached the accused’s section 8 rights. In that case, a young man was in custody at RCMP headquarters for five days. During the course of his detention, Stillman blew his nose into a tissue and tossed it out. The police retrieved the discarded tissue and obtained Stillman’s DNA.
The Supreme Court in Stillman focussed on the fact that the accused was in custody and had no real alternative to giving up his bodily samples:
[W]hen an accused person is in custody, the production of bodily samples is not an unforeseen occurrence. It is simply the inevitable consequence of the normal functioning of the human body. The police are only able to profit from the production of the samples because the accused is continuously under their surveillance. For this reason it is somewhat misleading to speak of “abandonment” in the context of evidence obtained from an accused who is in custody. … In those circumstances, how can the appellant assert his right not to consent to the provision of bodily samples? He would be required to destroy every tissue he used, to hide every spoon he ate from, to keep cigarette butts, chewed gum or any other potentially incriminating evidence on his person at all times in order to prevent the police from “retrieving” this “potentially useful waste”
[Stillman, at paras. 58-59.]
Why is the custody versus out of custody distinction so significant?
The reality of modern urban life is that the only realistic way to dispose of household garbage is through the municipal waste system. The production of household garbage is not an unforseen occurrence. It is simply the “inevitable consequence” of civilization. The garbage has to go somewhere. It is completely impractical (and probably illegal) to have to burn every piece of garbage that you want to keep private. Indeed, in Calgary, where Mr. Patrick lived, by-laws make it illegal to dispose of household garbage in any way other than by placing it in a waste container for collection.
Thus, whether you are in custody or at home, the waste you produce will eventually end up in the hands of the state.
(Incidentally, Calgary also has a by-law making it illegal to scavenge through someone’s garbage. The police violated the by-law, but I doubt whether anybody wrote them a ticket. Isn’t the existence of this by-law indicative of the important privacy concerns that we have in our waste? The majority dismissed the relevance of the by-law [Patrick, at para. 68].)
Despite recognizing the important privacy concerns with respect to the contents of a household garbage bag the Supreme Court simply could not get past the abandoment issue:
Residential waste includes an enormous amount of personal information about what is going on in our homes, including a lot of DNA on household tissues, highly personal records (e.g., love letters, overdue bills and tax returns) and hidden vices (pill bottles, syringes, sexual paraphernalia, etc.). As it was put by counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a garbage bag may more accurately be described as a bag of “information” whose contents, viewed in their entirety, paint a fairly accurate and complete picture of the householder’s activities and lifestyle. Many of us may not wish to disclose these things to the public generally or to the police in particular.
…
[A]part from the key issue of abandonment, the circumstances in this case favour the appellant. The police were trying to find out what was “happening inside a private dwelling, the most private of places” (Plant, at p. 302). … The gathering up of the contents of the bags by the police provided them with a window into the appellant’s private life.
[Patrick, at paras. 30, 40; emphasis mine.]
So when exactly does household waste become abandoned such that the police can freely look into that window? The defence argued that the privacy interest in garbage should continue until the garbage becomes anonymous. The Court rejected this view outright:
The idea that s. 8 protects an individuals’s privacy in garbage until the last unpaid bill rots into dust, or the incriminating letters turn into muck and are no longer decipherable, is to my mind too extravagant to contemplate. It would require the entire municipal disposal system to be regarded as an extension, in terms of privacy, of the dwelling-house.
[Patrick, at para. 54.]
Is that actually “too extravagant to contemplate?” Is the defence’s proposal such a bad idea? I certainly think that the personal items I throw in the trash ought to remain private until they cease to exist. I bet a lot of Canadians would agree with me. The municipal garbage system, to me, is like an Orwellian memory hole.
The Court concluded that the moment we toss our garbage bags to the curb, our privacy interest in the contents of the bags is at an end. It doesn’t matter if the garbage bags are on your side of the property line. It doesn’t matter if you take pains to drive your garbage bags all the way to the dump site. The majority held that:
Given the “totality of the circumstances” test, little would be gained by an essay on different variations of garbage disposal. To take a few common examples, however, the rural people who take their garbage to a dump and abandon it to the pickers and the seagulls, the apartment dweller who unloads garbage down a chute to the potential scrutiny of a curious building superintendent, and the householder who takes surreptitious advantage of a conveniently located dumpster to rid himself or herself of the “bag of information” are all acting in a manner inconsistent with the reasonable assertion of a continuing privacy interest, in my view.
…
[T]he appellant had abandoned his privacy interest in the contents of the garbage bags gathered up by the police when he placed them in the garbage alcove open to the laneway ready for collection. The taking by the police did not constitute a search and seizure within the scope of s. 8, and the evidence (as well as the fruits of the search warrant obtained in reliance on such evidence) was properly admissible.
[Patrick, at paras. 64, 73.]
There was a brief concurring opinion by Justice Abella. Though she did not believe that a Charter breach had occurred in this case, her focus was not on the abandonment issue.
Abella J. found that abandonment alone should not automatically leave household waste open to police scrutiny. She was concerned that under the majority’s approach, the police would have unrestricted access “to information most people would never expect to be publicly accessible.” In her view, a person has a diminished, but not extinguished, expectation of privacy in respect of garbage which has been abandoned [Patrick, para. 90].
Given that there was some expectation of privacy, this expectation would have to be balanced against the legitimate interests of the state in investigating crime. Abella J. did not believe that prior judicial authorization in the form of a warrant would strike the appropriate balance. Instead, she felt that police must have a reasonable suspicion. “Reasonable suspicion” was not defined in the judgment, but it usually refers to some articulable grounds for believing that a crime has taken place. It is more than a mere hunch, but something less than reasonable and probable grounds; a fairly low threshold.
“[I]n my view, with respect, the privacy of personal information emanating from the home, which has been transformed into household waste and put out for disposal, is entitled to protection from indiscriminate state intrusion. Such information should not be seen to automatically lose its “private” character simply because it is put outside for garbage disposal. Before the state can rummage through the personal information from this ultimate zone of privacy, there should be, at the very least, a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is likely to be committed.”
[Abella J., concurring, in Patrick, at para. 77.]
Certainly when we throw our garbage out we are giving up a proprietary claim to it. But I think that our proprietary claim has to be treated as distinct from our privacy interest. I think it’s an inherent expectation of Canadians that what we throw out will be free from scrutiny by other members of the public, and certainly by the state.
Abella J.’s decision is much more compelling in that it recognizes a legitimate (though diminished) expectation of privacy in things we throw out.
Unfortunately, today’s majority decision significantly abrogates our privacy rights in this country.
German Multinational Loses Teapot Battle
Have a cuppa.
First posted on Commercial Law International on April 3, 2009.
It is an understatement to say that the English take their tea very seriously. And it is little wonder why a small teashop in Surrey, England, even when faced with potential financial ruin, would not back down from a much larger German multinational. This is a tale about tea better yet teapots; a David and a Goliath; and lest I forget the rights to uses a logo.
Not long after the Tea Box opened, providing an up-market alternative to the run of the mill ‘main street’ coffee shop, it was faced with a legal challenge from a Duesseldorf based company. It would seem Teekanne, which happens to mean teapot in German, took exception to the hand painted teapot logo that Tea Box was using. Teekanne claimed that it was too similar to its own logo and could cause customer confusion.
What Teekanne wasn’t counting on – I guess they expected such a small time operation to be impressed by its sized and resources and cave in but this is the UK and we are talking a bout tea but I digress. What they were not counting on was that one of the UK’s leading intellectual property firms coming to the rescue of Tea Box. Withers & Rogers LLP took on the case pro bono- for my none legal people out there this means free. This is good to see, as a profession we need more of this. The words pro bono for lawyers as become all too often associated with criminal, civil rights, family or judicial review matters, please don’t read this as a dig at the lawyer who perform such work, they are doing a great community service, however, the community can also be served when commercial law firms take on such cases.
And now back to the story.
After receiving early indications from the UK Intellectual Property Office that it would likely rule in favour of Tea Box, Teekanne promptly withdrew, great for Tea Box but not so great for Teekanne. Not did it lose money from mounting this legal challenge but it also had the effect of improving the market awareness of the Tea Box brand. You could even say that for Tea Box Commercial Awareness Is Global – hahahhahah, sorry about the cheesy plug for the site but hey I am a future lawyer trying to carve out a niche for my self.
Real Media Don’t Die, We Multiply
If you’ve been alive and on the Internet in the past year you would have read the obituaries – print newspapers are dead. Or dying, so they claim.
Some are even claiming the recession with determine the outcome of print, who are expected to see a major decline in 2009. Even law reviews are seeing the transition to exclusive virtual publication. And print legal researchers may be an endangered species.
One of the best April Fool’s gags this year was The Guardian‘s story on how they had moved to Twitter – exclusively.
But others claim that traditional media is not dying, it’s simply changing. Parker Mason, a PR friend of mine in TO said,
Did the invention of the printing press kill off the spoken word? No. It just meant that hand-lettered books were no longer necessary, and it gave more people access to literature and information.
Did the invention of radio kill off the written word? Again, no.
Did television indeed kill the radio star? No, but it might have forced some radio stars to adapt to become more television-friendly. And it also created a whole knew breed of radio stars.
Did the internet kill television? Again, no. If you’re like me, you might not use an actual television set but you probably still enjoy watching television shows on your computer or portable device.
Print media is likely to be around regardless. What papers will do is probably enhance their online presence, and many Canadian papers are already seeing an explosion of comments and interactivity on their sites. Dany Horovitz of Law is Cool also writes for the National Post’s Executive Blog, an exclusively digital publication.
Legal media is probably not much different, despite our affinity in this industry for paper. With over 4,500 hits a day on this site (and growing), we’re competing directly with legal print media for numbers. But not necessarily readership, because ours is global; or even for content, given our unique format and different focus on students specifically.
Smart newspapers will make this transition seamlessly. Smarter ones will partner with existing online media outlets.
The University of Western Ontario’s law school paper, Nexus, did post here for some time through their former editor-in-chief, Alex Dimson. The paper has gone through some changes and is now named Amicus Curiae, and we’re pleased to announce that the new paper will posting selective articles on Law is Cool as well.
Check out Ahmed Farahat’s excellent interview with Justice Binnie. Kamila Pizon of Amicus Curiae will also be posting shortly on the transition from LL.B. to J.D.
The synergies between print and virtual media are natural but often overlooked. We benefit from well-researched, carefully edited pieces, and they have an opportunity to speak to a larger audience.
Trained journalists also benefit from going online, and bring their writing skills with them.
For example, we’ve just taken on Digal Haio, a 2L at Osgoode. I first met Digal years ago during outreach activities in politics, where she was working for the Somali Press, an important voice for a vibrant and dynamic community with unique challenges of marginalization, discrimination, and racism. We’ve always had a strong mandate on this site for social justice and empowerment, and her contributions will definitely be valued.
At one time I also worked as a reporter in a print-based newspaper as a side job.
But the conversation goes the other way as well. I recently did an interview with Charles Adler on his nationally-syndicated radio show. The topic of conversation? My blog post on Animal Spirits, something everyone is worrying about in the midst of the G20 and economic troubles. I did another interview yesterday with Luigi Bennetton for Lawyers Weekly on web collaboration and wikis.
The Internet is an excellent place journalists to find topics of interest among the public, and find resources and experts for their pieces.
Law firms and lawyers have never underestimated the need for media presence, for client development or even basic advocacy. At some point they’ll have to start including online media, because that’s where most of the content will be. The University of Western Ontario law school recently started posting videos and downloadable audio files for our distinguished speakers, a move that will likely increase their profile generally in the legal community.
The growth of online media does not necessarily mean the demise of print. It just harkens change, one of the inevitabilities in life. Those embracing this change will not only flourish, but will find their media experiences enriched as a result.
Please note most of us are entering our exam period, and regular postings will be on hold.
Flexibility, Please
Blame the current economic crisis on too much debt taken on with too little research.
Nobel Prize winning economist Myron Scholes lectured at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Law on March 19, packing the faculty’s largest classroom to overflowing with students, professors and businesspersons curious to know what the Professor (Emeritus) of Finance from Stanford University had to say about today’s financial doldrums.
Scholes, who won the Nobel Prize in 1997 for work on the Black-Scholes Options Pricing Theory, was speaking as part of the Torys LLP Business and Law Pre-Eminent Scholars Series.
When financing operations, business organizations can choose between raising equity by selling shares, or taking on debt. Often they prefer debt financing because interest on debt is tax deductible.
Leading up to the crisis, financial institutions leveraged debt heavily, which means the outcomes, whether positive or negative, would be magnified.
One of the main problems with the current debt market, Scholes suggested, is the debt rating system. Under the current regime, debt that is considered high quality is low risk for investors. By comparison, debt that is rated lower is considered more risky — and with that weighting comes a greater promised rate of return.
Scholes offered several criticisms of the rating system.
First, he suggested that rating agencies use too little data in making their assumptions. The agencies used data from only the last few years and assumed – incorrectly, as it turned out – that housing prices wouldn’t fall. Had agencies used older data, they would have seen different long-term trends.
Secondly, rating agencies assumed that any losses on housing prices would occur idiosyncratically. In other words, their models did not have a built-in contagion or domino effect.
Thirdly, the current rating system suffers from a “cheapest to deliver” problem. Scholes compared the problem to buying wheat. If wheat vendors are only allowed to put up to X amount of sawdust in their wheat, then those vendors will put exactly X amount of sawdust in their wheat. Likewise, when rating agencies specify precisely what criteria will achieve a high rating of, say, AAA, then companies will do just enough to pass that test and no more. Indeed, they will keep pushing the envelope to get away with doing less.
In the future, Scholes said our economies will need a design with more flexibility. Flexibility refers to the ability to protect oneself with financial reserves.
During prosperous times, keeping reserves, such as money in the bank, instead of investing is seen as costly. However, a policy based on the preservation of some flexibility will signal to people that having options is a part of life. By example, carrying an umbrella when it does not rain is burdensome; not carrying an umbrella when it starts to rain is more burdensome. As people become afraid, they build up excess amounts of reserves and money stops flowing through the economy.
Ultimately, Scholes argued that the cost of being reactive is gigantic. Financial and political leaders should think about developing proactive solutions that build flexibility into our economy.
The Torys LLP Business and Law Pre-Eminent Scholars series is one of Western Law’s most popular courses. Each month one of the world’s top legal and business scholars presents a paper in his or her area of expertise to Western law students.
Cross-posted from the Financial Post Executive Blog and the UWO Law site.
Amicus Curiae sits down with Justice Binnie of the Supreme Court of Canada
Ahmed Farahat of UWO’s new law paper interviews Justice Ian Binnie. From the February issue of Amicus.
If I can start by asking you: when did you first decide to embark on a career in law?
I think when I was in college. I arrived at it by a process of elimination. I could see all sorts of jobs that I was congenitally incapable of doing. I did a lot of debating in my undergraduate years, and becoming a barrister seemed like fun.
I noticed in your biography on the Supreme Court’s website that you did your LL.B. in Cambridge. Why did you get your law degree from the UK?
At the time I went, Ontario accepted entry to the British bar to go straight to the Bar Admission Course. So I thought: here is an opportunity to see another part of the world and get an educational qualification that is recognized in Ontario. Unfortunately, when I was away they changed the rules and when I came back, they said well, now you have to get an LL.B. from an Ontario law school. Seemed like a good idea at the beginning.
How was the Cambridge experience different from the one you had here at the University of Toronto?
The experience in the UK is totally different from University of Toronto. In the UK, they studied medieval English, Roman law, and all kinds of topics that were absolutely of no practical importance whatsoever. Toronto, when I got there, was experiencing quite a golden age with Bora Laskin and many interesting professors. So there was eventually no duplication at all between the three years I spent at Cambridge and the two years I spent at Toronto. And there is no doubt that Toronto’s education was of a higher order. The English system has law as an undergraduate degree, so you go straight from high school to law, whereas in Canada, students already completed their undergraduate degree. In England, there was no real reason to go into law other than escaping history and literature and all the other courses you performed poorly in during high school.
Tupac’s Mother Files Counter-Suit Over Late Son’s Film Rights
First posted on Commercial Law International on March 19, 2009.
The mother of late rapper Tupac Shakur, Afeni Shakur, filed a $10 million suit against Morgan Creek, an independent production company over the rights to make a biopic of the rapper. This is a counter claim to a suit filed earlier by Morgan Creek in Los Angeles alleging Amaru Entertainment reneged on a deal to sell the rights for a biopic about the deceased rapper.
Amaru Entertainment, what is that and how did they get involved in this dispute? Isn’t it between Morgan Creek and Ms. Shakur?
This is easily explained. Amaru Entertainment controls the estate of the late rapper which in turn is over seen by Ms. Shakur.
Ok, with me now.
This whole morass it would seem stems from, and you will never guess, Biggie Smalls. Yes the other late rapper and Tupac’s rival, Christopher Wallis a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G – no no please don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to reignite the whole West Coast-East Coast, Tupac vs Biggie thing. I simply want to point out that this dispute, in my opinion, is highly connected and only arose after the biopic, “Notorious,” about Biggie grossed over $20 million in its opening weekend earlier this January and potentially profitability of a Tupac biopic became fully crystallized in the minds of both parties.
The central legal question is this case appears to whether or nor there was a deal between Morgan Creek and Amaru entertainment. For all the present and former law students out there, yeah, offer and acceptance is rearing it ugly head out side the safe confines of a law school.
Hahahahahahhahaha.
Was there in fact a deal? You decide:
Both parties were in advanced negotiations about a biopic on the later rapper. In December of last year Morgan Creek received a final term sheet which detailed everything that would be required to reach a deal. Morgan Creek’s executives in late January accepted this proposal – please note that this is after the “Notorious” opening weekend. It then began tell others in the film industry that it in fact owned the rights to a Tupac biopic. Morgan Creek then file suit in order to get Amaru to honor the deal.
Amaru Entertainment for its part claims that that there was no deal but that the final term sheet was in fact a counter offer and was the basis of further negotiations. In fact key details of a deal were not workout, such as an executive producer credit for Ms. Shakur. Because Morgan Creek was only one of many suitors for the biopic rights – others included Fox Searchlight, Paramount and Kennedy/Marshall – when they began telling others in the industry that they owned the film rights it sabotaged negotiations with the other studios.
Like I said a morass.
