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Top Ten DUIs of the Decade
Check Points has the Top Ten DUIs for the Decade:
* Academy Award nominee Nick Nolte was arrested in September 2002 when highway patrol pulled him over for erratic driving in Malibu. Nolte was described by officers as “drooling” and “completely out of it.” Nolte had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, once referring to himself as a “functioning drunk,” according to CBS News.
* Actor and comedian Tracy Morgan, formerly of Saturday Night Live, had a blood–alcohol level of .13 when he was arrested in Hollywood in December 2005. Morgan was given three years of probation as a result of the DUI offense, and had to attend an alcohol education program, according to an Associated Press report.
* Canadian rock group Nickleback’s front man, Chad Kroeger, was arrested for DUI in British Columbia in June 2006, according to the Canadian Press. Kroeger was pulled over for “excessive speeding and erratic driving,” while in his $175,000 Lamborghini. After the arrest, Kroeger’s main concern was how his car was to be transported home. The officers allowed him to make arrangements and stay with the car until he was sure it would make it safely back to his house.
* In July 2006, actor Mel Gibson was arrested for DUI in California. He also reportedly had an open container in his car, according to CNN. Gibson’s DUI arrest was made memorable after he was reported to have made anti-Semitic and sexist comments, for which he later apologized. Gibson’s DUI has since been expunged.
* Child star Haley Joel Osment, famous for his roles in The Sixth Sense and A.I., was charged with DUI in July 2006. According to People Magazine, Osment crashed his car into a mailbox and flipped over. He was charged with the possession of marijuana and for being under the age of 21 with a .05 blood-alcohol level. Osment was 18 years old at the time.
* Paris Hilton: Singer, actress, comedian, heiress, arrestee? According to MSNBC, Hilton was on her way to In-N-Out Burger after having not eaten all day when she was pulled over and arrested for DUI in September 2006. The heiress said of her DUI arrest, “It was nothing,” and her publicist said he doubted it would hurt her reputation – if anything, it seems like it made her more famous.
* Nicole Richie, star of TV’s “The Simple Life,” was arrested for DUI in California in December 2006. According to an ABC News report, Richie was driving alone in her Mercedes SUV. Officers picked her up after receiving 911 calls about a car driving on the wrong side of the expressway. At the time of her arrest, Richie was said to be 5′1″ and weighed just 85 pounds.
* In July 2007 in Santa Monica, Calif., Lindsay Lohan was booked in jail for a DUI investigation after a 911 call from a woman who was allegedly being chased by Lohan’s SUV. This arrest occurred only two weeks after the actress left rehab, according to a Fox News report. Lohan was unable to pass a field sobriety test at the time of her arrest.
* Comedian and former Saturday Night Live cast member, Bill Murray, was traveling abroad in Sweden when was seen driving around in a golf cart in August 2007. Murray was never convicted, according to CBS News, but he refused a breathalyzer when Swedish authorities pulled him over, so they required a blood test. Officials said prison was unlikely, but the actor faced a fine. No one knows where the golf cart came from, but officials asserted that there were no theft charges against the actor.
* The star of the hit TV series “24″, Kiefer Sutherland, was arrested in Hollywood in September 2007 on suspicion of DUI. After making an illegal U-turn, the actor was pulled over by LAPD officials and failed a field sobriety test, according to People Magazine. This was Sutherland’s second DUI arrest of the decade (the first was in 2004), so he served mandatory jail time.
Female Ski Jumpers Refused Leave to Appeal
In what must feel like a complete let down only two months before the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, the Supreme Court of Canada has refused a leave of appeal by a group of female ski jumpers who are demanding for equality with hopes that they too will be allowed to compete alongside their male counterparts in February. The SCC did not release any reasons for their decision.
The women’s lawyer, called the decision a case of “textbook discrimination.”
The trials and tribulations began when the women launched a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. When that failed, they pursued a court action.
The IOC voted not to include women’s ski jumping at the 2010 Winter Olympics because the sport didn’t meet the necessary criteria for inclusion. The IOC requires that a sport must have contested at least two world championships before it can become an Olympic event. There are also rules dictating how far in advance a sport can be added to the Olympic program.
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Mental Disabilities Do Not Qualify for Parking
We’re pretty sure this guy doesn’t qualify, even by their local by-laws, to park in this spot.
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Don’t ask, don’t think: The problem with schools in Muslim countries
Guest post by Soroush Seifi
Originally published in the Toronto Star, May 21, 2006, D11
My name is Soroush. I was born in Iran 21 years ago and now reside in Toronto. I lived through the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. But this article is not about me. It is about a disturbing trend in education in Muslim countries.
I hope to draw a correlation between the education system in Iran and the recruitment of angry, young and easily manipulated individuals by terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda.
The ruins of Ground Zero are proof that we no longer live in an isolated box. The problems of people on one side of the world can bring destruction to people on the other. I say this only to reiterate former secretary of state Colin Powell’s statement in 2004:
To eradicate terrorism, the United States must help… alleviate conditions in the world that enable terrorists to bring in new recruits.
It seems that conditions in the Middle East are not being “alleviated,” as the U.S. administration had planned. Even Republican senators disagree with U.S. President George W. Bush on the war in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ annual surveys consistently show a lack of freedom of expression, human rights, access to resources, economic stability and technological innovation in societies where most terrorists come from.
So perhaps there are more effective ways than military force to fight terrorism. The failure of American military intervention should prompt us to look at other dimensions of the conflict.
The school system of countries like Iran, where I was educated, is a good place to start.
To be a terrorist, it is not enough to be poor and angry. Otherwise, many more terrorists would originate from places like sub-Saharan Africa, where the rates of poverty are much worse than in Saudi Arabia, the homeland of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists. Those terrorists were predominantly from middle-class families.
The more interesting issue is why these individuals were unable to think for themselves and find better ways of showing displeasure than through terrorism. My personal school experience in Iran offers a clue.
My education there was a military-like experience. The vice principal would stand in front of students lined up in formation and ask us to repeat pro-government propaganda, such as “Long Live Hezbollah” (a Middle Eastern paramilitary group with a strong presence in Iran and Lebanon). I was only 10 back then.
I remember that the teacher was similar to a God figure. We accepted his/her words without a grain of salt. Students were not encouraged to think for themselves or come up with our own solutions. On the contrary, we were spoon-fed information.
In religion and Qur’an classes (mandatory for all students), we learned the “correct” way of speaking, reading and acting. The incessant declaration of the importance of tradition helped students conform to what the authorities considered “Islamic.” For example, it was blasphemous to dress in “feminine” colours, have a fancy haircut or, in general, think outside of the box. Such transgressions were often met with physical abuse.
I remember one of my close friends, Ali Esmaili, asked our Grade 5 teacher,
Miss, is it true that Ayatollah Khomeini only had an elementary school education?
The teacher immediately got up from her chair and her glare became fixed on Ali’s eyes. She asked him to stand up. When he did, she hit him. After three blows, the teacher told Ali to go to the office and call his parents because he was going to be expelled from school.
Ali was not expelled in the end, but I learned never to question authority again. I can only assume that the other 41 students in that class continue to believe that very same message today:
Never think for yourself.
When it came to mathematics and science, those subjects were no more than a struggle through theoretical concepts in books that we bought at the beginning of each school year. I never had to do research, look through dictionaries and encyclopedias, or go to the library to learn things on my own.
I remember that teachers constantly reviewed many of the political experiences of the nation in a certain framework. We were taught to accept some values and reject others. For one reason or another, the teachers, despite their own personal opinions, usually promoted the status quo.
In Grade 7, my teachers told me and other students to tell our parents to “vote for Nouri,” the conservative opponent of the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami.
My experience in Canadian schools has been entirely different. I moved here in 1997 with my family and went into Grade 8 in the Toronto public school system. The teachers there taught me to understand things through various creative activities and to think for myself.
I sometimes wonder whether young Muslims who become terrorists are trapped by the limits of their education. Like me and my classmates in Iran, they don’t question anything; they merely do what others tell them to do for no other reason than to simply obey orders.
To alleviate terrorism, it will be necessary to create educational systems in Muslim countries like Iran that allow the harvest of children’s creative ideas. Allowing thought to grow will give these children the opportunity to imagine and be innovative as adults; they will find new ways to solve their problems. These solutions will stem from within and most likely match their culture, as well.
It is not possible to build a house without first laying the foundation. Hence, developed nations – instead of military intervention – have the responsibility to help lay the foundation and encourage education systems that foster creativity in Muslim nations.
Soroush Seifi is a Kinesiologist who graduated in the top 5% of his class during his final year at York University. He was the creator and president of Red Cross Society at York University when he wrote the piece above.
He was recently accepted to Whittier Law School in 2009 on a scholarship, and is currently working before starting law school.
Union Rights for Agricultural Workers in Ontario
For the first time in Canadian legal history, arguments relating to the plight of Canada’s migrant workers will be heard at the Supreme Court of Canada on December 17th, 2009. The Intervention brought jointly by Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) and the Industrial Accidents Victims Group of Ontario (IAVGO) will be heard as part of Fraser v Attorney General of Ontario, which relates to the right to organize and bargain collectively for Ontario’s 100,000 agricultural workers.
J4MW and IAVGO will highlight the particular experiences of migrant workers and how their rights are being violated under the following sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
Section 1 (The Right to Guaranteed Freedoms)
Section 2.d (The Right to Freedom of Association)
Section 15 (The Right to Equality under the Charter)
From their factum [para 9-11]:
The Respondents have identified the social, political and economic profile of agricultural workers in Ontario. Specifically, they are described as “a large foreign migrant work force that is legally restricted to working in agriculture;” many of whom are “non-white immigrants who have recently arrived in Canada;” and who perform the “fourth most dangerous job in Ontario.”
The Interveners further submit that this Court must recognize the intersecting enumerated and analogous grounds of race, gender, disability and citizenship that underlie the occupational status of many agricultural workers – a status that supports conditions for their continued marginalization in Canada, and restrains their enjoyment of essential freedoms. That is, “agricultural workers” are not solely identified as a group because they work in a particular sector in the Canadian economy; they are also identified by immutable characteristics, that is, by the persons they are.
The Interveners further submit that “agricultural worker,” itself, is an immutable characteristic because of its roots in, and proliferation of, indentured servitude. Such proliferation is seen in the structures of the federal Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) and other Temporary Foreign Worker Programs (TFWP) and, by extension, the agricultural industry. The essential dignity interests of migrant agricultural workers are undermined by the severe inequality and exploitation perpetuated by these structures. They are subject to stereotyping that limit the kind of work they are permitted to do in Canada.
Those who “nip-tip” Asian anglers guilty on both sides of the border
In 2007, Chinese language media in Ontario began coverage about an interesting phenomenon: in and around popular Lake Simcoe fishing spots, reports of incidents where anglers of Asian decent were targeted for assault. Most commonly, Asian anglers or their equipment were thrown into the water. An inquiry by the Ontario Human Rights Commission found evidence of racial harassment that ranged from the use of racial slurs to stone-throwing.
Coverage of the issue increased when at the end of one incident, a car accident left a young man in a coma. Today, the defendant charged in that Sept. 16, 2007 incident was found guilty of assault and criminal negligence.
Toronto Star
Sponsored Post: Can You Supersize That!
The claims management market in the U.K. has seen a significant growth with an estimated fifteen hundred companies engaging in personal injury referral work. The total size of the market is approaching £300 million, which is small in comparison to the number of firms which engage in personal injury referrals.
These figures suggest that there are a few major players in the market but that there is sufficient room for other smaller players who can still make significant returns.
There are a number of reasons for the growth in the number of claims management companies:
1. Consumer awareness:
Since the introduction of the Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) the pioneering claims management companies went to considerable lengths to advertise people’s ability to claim compensation for personal injury. Over this period other companies have matched entered and bolstered their share of the marketing, contributing to the total marketing spend and increasing consumer awareness. Claims Management Company, Accidents Direct, was founded in 2002 and is now one of the biggest online spenders referring over one thousand personal injury enquires each month. Because of this year on year increase in marketing spend, consumers are more aware of their rights which has meant more work for claims management companies.
2. The Recession:
The Credit Crunch and subsequent recession has meant many entrepreneurs have seen personal injury referral work as a stable income in a volatile economic market. Personal injury work is largely unaffected by the activities of the banking sector, not relying on consumer purchases to bolster income. The service is, on a whole, completely free to the consumer and accidents will always occur despite the economy. There is therefore a constant stream of work for existing and new businesses to take advantage of.
3. The Compensation Act 2006
Official regulation has helped improve the reputation of the industry. Firms engaged in referral work are able to operate within clear guidelines, providing a structure to the business model while ensuring the consumer is protected form companies operating in unscrupulous activities.
This was a sponsored post by:
Personal injury claims, Accident Claim, Medical negligence
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Pay Equity: Did the Ignatieff Liberals Vote Against “a basic human right”?
Yesterday, Michael Ignatieff stated that pay equity is “a basic human right” and blasted the Conservatives who “[...] very clearly used their 2009 budget to impose their ideological opposition to pay equity for Canadian women.” I have to agree with Ignatieff on both counts.
Last year, I wrote a research paper for my Poverty Law class at Robson Hall (“Canadian Pay Equity Regimes in Context: Evaluating the effectiveness of pay equity dispute resolution mechanisms and remedies”) in which I compared the pay equity regimes of every jurisdiction in Canada. In particular, I was interested in access to effective remedies for women being paid less than men for work of equal value. In general, pay equity legislation only protects public sector workers, not workers in the private sector (although Ontario and Quebec also extend pay equity protection to some private sector employees). Most provinces and the federal government employ a legislative regime in which women may file a pay equity complaint either through a human rights commission or a dedicated pay equity commission.
The only exceptions to this type of legislative framework are the three western provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan and British Columbia have both adopted equity frameworks – essentially government policies that require public sector employers to implement some form of pay equity through the collective bargaining process. Alberta is the only jurisdiction in Canada that has no pay equity protections whatsoever. Alberta, like British Columbia, does require that workers receive the same pay for “the same or substantially similar work” (the wording of the legislation in British Columbia is “similar or substantially similar work”). However, this does not constitute pay equity, as such. Pay equity requires equal pay for work of equal value, even if the specific job classes are substantially different. In other words, pay equity looks at the value of the work being performed, not the similarity of job descriptions.
The budgetary measure to which Ignatieff is referring in his statement is a provision of Federal Budget 2009, which promises to eliminate the role of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in the federal pay equity regime. Instead, the government promises to integrate pay equity more closely with the collective bargaining process in order to “ensure that the employer and bargaining agents are jointly responsible and accountable for negotiating salaries that are fair and equitable to all employees.” Ostensibly, the government’s rationale is that the current system is “a lengthy, costly and adversarial process”; however, as Ignatieff indicated in his statement, there is reason to believe that the Conservatives’ real motivation is an ideological opposition to pay equity as such.
It is first of all worth pointing out that the government’s characterization of the current complaint-based regime is not altogether inaccurate. In fact, many of the early pay equity cases involving large public sector employers took years or even decades to resolve (see e.g. Bell Canada v. C.E.P., [1998] F.C.J. No. 1609 (Fed. C.A.), rev’g (1998), 143 F.T.R. 81 (Fed. Ct. TD), leave to appeal to S.C.C. refused, 27063 (July 8, 1999)). However, it would be wrong to conclude that a complaint-based mechanism for pay equity can’t work in practice, as I argued in my paper:
One of the lessons thus far has been that many of the delays in the current regimes relate to difficulty in understanding and implementing the complex technical requirements of job comparison. This issue can and should be addressed in a number of different ways. First, the highly technical and specialized nature of pay equity befits a specialized administrative apparatus including a binding tribunal that is institutionally separate from other human rights and labour bodies. The Pay Equity Office, Commission, and Tribunal model championed in Ontario and Québec is promising in that it recognizes and affirms the sui generis nature of pay equity within the corpus of human rights and labour laws. Decision makers within that apparatus will therefore be better equipped to apply the technical requirements of pay equity in a more expedient manner. The second (and related) point is that pay equity commissions should be sufficiently staffed and resourced so as to better assist non-unionized workers in bringing a complaint against their employer.
In any event, even if we were to conclude that a complaint-based model in unworkable, the collective bargaining alternative is even worse. Again, quoting from my paper:
The most glaring gap in pay equity law is the jurisdictional gap. While most jurisdictions in this country have implemented some form of pay equity legislation, scores of Canadian women enjoy no pay equity protection at law. This includes those provinces in which internal government policy affords only remote administrative law challenges to women in segregated jobs. Female workers in Alberta have no legal recourse to obtain a remedy for violations of their human rights in respect of equal pay for work of equal value.
The complete lack of legal protection for workers in these jurisdictions does not sit well with the characterization of pay equity as a human right. Indeed, the complete omission of any protection for pay equity in Alberta undermines the universality of human rights. Yet even among jurisdictions that have enacted legally-enforceable pay equity laws, the scope of the legislation has generally been limited to the public sector. Ontario and Québec stand alone in providing any pay equity protection to women in the private sector. Again, this limitation in scope to is a curious departure from the characterization of equal pay for work of equal value as a human right rather than as a policy decision.
The ultimate shortcoming of current pay equity regimes is not the principle of equal pay for work of equal value, but the lack of access to effective and timely remedies. While the complaint-based tribunal system suffers from many glaring flaws, the relegation of pay equity away from tribunals and into the collective bargaining process represents a major retrenchment of women’s legal right to a pay equity remedy. In this sense, I would argue that Ignatieff’s position against the measures outlined in Budget 2009 is the correct one. I would go even further, though, by establishing a dedicated pay equity commission and extending the legislation to cover federally-regulated private sector workers.
My one and only criticism of Ignatieff here is that the Liberals voted in favour of Budget 2009! Clearly, voting in favour of a federal budget does not imply endorsement or consent to each and every line of the budget. For example, the NDP’s support of a ways and means motion in September does not imply that party’s support for every line of the motion, so much as their desire for trade-offs in respect of employment insurance. For every vote in the House of Commons, politicians must engage in a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the good parts of a bill outweigh the bad parts. A great deal of horse trading goes on between all of the political parties, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.
However, a major point of contrast between the NDP and the Liberals is that the NDP has consistently maintained the position that human rights are non-negotiable. That is, while the New Democrats will make policy concessions within the legitimate set of options available to government, they will not endorse any bill that undermines fundamental human rights. This explains, for example, the difference between how the New Democrats and Liberals have voted on same-sex marriage legislation in the past (the New Democrats voted unanimously for same-sex marriage, save for one MP who was ousted from the party in consequence; several Liberal MPs voted against same-sex marriage).
To the extent that equal pay for work of equal value is a human right (and Michael Ignatieff seems to think that it is), doesn’t it follow that the Liberals voted in favour of against, in Ignatieff’s words, “a basic human right”? If so, what does this say about the Liberals’ attitude in respect of the universality of human rights? It seems to me that the undermining basic human rights appears to be a deal-breaker for New Democrats, whereas the Liberals are willing to vote in against human rights where it suits their purposes.
On the other hand, maybe I’m just grumpy from studying too much for my exams. In any event, Ignatieff’s change of heart on the federal pay equity regime is a welcome change.
The UK Extents Tax Amnesty
First posted on Commercial Law International December 7, 2009. In a very surprising move HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has extended it tax amnesty program – the New Disclosure Opportunity (NDO). The NDO was set to expire on November 30 of this year but has been extended to January 4 of next. Under the program tax payers with undisclosed offshore accounts nestled away in any number of one or more tax havens are given a chance to come clean with UK taxman. The tax payer would pay a relatively small penalty – 10% as compared to a 100% penalty – on any back taxes owed but would also avoid the risk of prosecution. All in all the NDO doesn’t sound like a bad deal or is it? As good a deal as the NDO sounds, it seems that it hasn’t had as many takers as the HMRC would like. This lack of uptake helps to explain the unexpected extension. The NDO after all was designed as a very enticing carrot by HMRC in hopes of boosting its falling tax revenues by allowing tax evaders to avoid the very large stick of a 100% penalty and or prosecution. There are two possible explanations for this lack of uptake. The first and least likely is that there are very little, if any, taxpayers out there holding undisclosed offshore accounts. The second and more likely explanation is that taxpayers a hedging their bets, say to the taxman: catch me if you can. Taxpayers know, even amongst the accounts already disclosed, that it is a very time consuming and more importantly expensive venture to trace funds in offshore accounts.
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