Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

This post was submitted by Lawson Lundell guest author Euan Sinclair, Director, Knowledge Management.

In the absence of a national identity card, many Canadians are routinely required to use their driving licences to prove their identity in the course of business, commerce or travel. But when is it lawful for organizations to record information from the licence to ...

On April 13–14, 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear a reference involving a show down between the federal government and various provincial governments over the question of whether the proposed new national securities regulator is constitutionally valid.

Currently, the securities industry in Canada is primarily regulated through provincial securities ...

What is civil contempt of court? A fair question given the Ontario Court of Appeal's recent decision to uphold a 14 month sentence for civil contempt in the case of Barry Landen. Mr. Landen had defrauded the estate of his good friend Paul Penni of millions of dollars. This 14 month sentence arose not from the crime Landen committed (for which to date he has served only a 45 day ...

Class proceedings are a powerful tool for consumers and lawyers.  In practical terms, class proceedings allow otherwise uneconomic claims to be brought and often create large monetary exposure to Defendants.  This occurs through aggregation.  If a class proceeding is “certified”, it will “aggregate” all of the claims of a “class” of claimants into one claim.  ...

I opened an earlier blog post on the topic of defamation over Twitter with the hypothetical question, "How much damage can you do to a person’s reputation in 140 characters?"  Accordingly to Courtney Love's recent settlement of an infamous defamation action against her, the answer seems to be - well over US$400,000.

Former Hole frontwoman Courtney Love found herself ...

Ever since the BC Court of Appeal (“BCCA”) decision in Shimco, practitioners and others have cried out for legislative amendments to the B.C. Builders Lien Act (the “Act”) which would see the elimination of a lien against holdback monies retained by owners and others down the contractual chain.  Prior to Shimco, such a lien was not generally thought to exist.  ...

For many people, Susan Heyes is something of a folk hero.  Ms. Heyes is the proprietor of Hazel & Co., a woman’s clothing store formerly located at the corner of 16th Avenue and Cambie Street in Vancouver.  Like many other businesses located along the Cambie Street corridor, Ms. Heyes’ business was adversely affected by the construction of the rapid transit Canada Line ...

Almost the only member of the press to notice, Julius Melnitzer recently reported an Ontario Court of Appeal decision that held the Royal Bank of Canada had no right to freeze accounts belonging to one of its customers by simply starting a lawsuit.  The case turned on the application of a little known (but much loved by litigators) section of the Bank Act: section 437(2).  This ...

The court process in Canada’s two western most provinces have much in common.  Prominently, new Rules of Civil Procedure has come into effect in both British Columbia and Alberta in the last 8 months.  Rules of Civil Procedure, often called Rules of Court, establish the procedures by which lawsuits are commenced and proceed in the superior courts of each province.

In British ...

A few months ago on this blog, my colleague Marko Vesely posted an excellent piece on “Defamation and Libel Meets Twitter”.  For those of you who just want the “take-home”, the ultimate message remains the same - with every Facebook update, blog post or “tweet”, in the eyes of the law you are “publishing” and that makes defamation and libel applicable to you!  ...