Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

In a recent decision from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Plentyoffish Media Inc. was fined $48,000 for violating Canada’s anti-spam legislation. This announcement comes only weeks after Compu-Finder was hit with a $1.1 million fine, which was the first fine levied after CASL came into effect in July 2014.

Plenty of Fish, a ...

Today, the Supreme Court of Canada, in a judgment that revealed a deep divide between Justices from Quebec and those from the rest of Canada, wrote the final chapter in the long-gun registry saga. In a 5 to 4 decision, with all 3 Quebec Justices in the minority, the Court dismissed Quebec’s constitutional challenge to federal legislation that mandated the destruction of ...

In a recent precedent-setting case, the Ontario trial court considered the boundaries of what is acceptable speech in the internet blogosphere. The case is one of first impression in Canada. As the court observed: “Political debate in the Internet blogosphere can be, and, often is, rude, aggressive, sarcastic, hyperbolic, insulting, caustic and/or vulgar. It is not ...

EAST TEXAS - On February 25, 2015, Apple Inc. was found liable for patent infringement on three patents owned by Smartflash LLC and ordered, by an East Texas jury, to pay Smartflash LLC the princely sum of $532.9 million dollars in damages for the infringement.

Smartflash LLC owns patents that cover methods for digital rights management over songs and software, and methods of ...

In the recent case of Carter v. Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada declared invalid the Criminal Code prohibitions against physician-assisted suicide.  Those provisions made it a crime for a person to “consent to have death inflicted on him” (s. 14) and to “aid or abet a person to commit suicide” (s.241(b)).  The SCC found this blanket prohibition was a breach of the ...

On January 27, the British Columbia Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in Bea v. The Owners Strata Plan, LMS 2138, 2015 BCCA 31, upholding the lower court’s decision finding the Plaintiff and her husband in contempt of Court and granting the extraordinary relief that the Plaintiff's strata unit (the “Unit”) be seized and sold by the respondent (the “Owners”). In ...

A promissory note is a written promise by a borrower to pay a sum of money to a lender upon the occurrence of an event, usually a demand for payment.  Promissory notes are often used by friends and family members to record loans made between them.  No one expects there to be problems at the outset and all are sure the loan will be repaid at some point.  But how long do promissory notes ...

A recent case from the BC Supreme Court has highlighted yet again that a guarantee or indemnity of a lease (here now referred to as an “Indemnity”) does not necessarily assure payment to a landlord following a default by a tenant.  The terms of the Indemnity must be carefully scrutinized and examined to determine if the specific circumstances outlined in the document are ...

Regrettably, this appears to be a case where the office of the Director of Civil Forfeiture has taken zealous measures outside the proper bounds of its home statute with the unfortunate effect of depriving a citizen of lawful possession and use of her property, putting that citizen to what I suspect is considerable expense and inconvenience to retrieve her property.

Those ...

On September 16, 2014, I blogged concerning the filing of a Notice of Civil Claim in British Columbia in Adolfo Garcia v. Tahoe Resources Inc.  That case concerns a claim against a Canadian parent company for mining activities conducted through a foreign subsidiary in Guatemala.  I noted a trend towards seeking redress against Canadian parent mining companies in Canadian ...