The issue of graphics or diagrams missing from online versions of judicial decisions has recently come to our attention. We’ll use McDonald’s Corp. v. Silverwood Industries Ltd. as an example, with specific regard to item number 3 in the table.

In the online version of this case, you get this from Lexis Advance Quicklaw:

Next, this is the version as it appears in Westlaw Next Canada:

Finally, though, in the print version, you get this:

Poor Mayor McCheese, excised from the online versions of the decision. This is very common in IP cases, where there are understandably a good many more drawings and graphics.

While the CCLA Library still has a wide collection of print reporters, and can easily go grab a copy of this decision off the shelf, the (maybe sad) truth is that many libraries have been discarding their print law reporter collections (as we will too, eventually). So, how do you get a copy of the print version?

How to Get a Copy of a Print Version of a Case Where the Graphic Has Been Removed

1. If this is time sensitive / “The Easiest Way”: Check with us. You can send us an email, or check our catalogue yourself to see if we have the law reporter you need. We’re more than happy to scan and send you a copy of the decision. If we don’t have the print reporter here, chances are we can still get a copy for you, but allow a business day turnaround time. It will likely be faster, but just in case

2. If you’re a WestlawNext Canada client: Contact their customer care department at ResearchSupport.LegalTaxCanada@TR.com. They will do their best to track down the print version and send it over. Please note that they can’t guarantee that they will have a copy, or what the turnaround time will be. Good news though: they are working on adding graphics back into decisions.

3. If you’re a Lexis Advance Quicklaw client: Contact their customer care department at service@lexisnexis.ca to get a copy of the image. Same disclaimer would apply about availability and turnaround time.

 

We’ve had a couple inquiries for the O’Brien’s Jury Charges (also known as Civil Jury Charges) publication at the library now. It was first brought to our attention by a student tasked to find it, as it had been referenced in the case Iannarella v. Corbett, 2015 ONCA 110 (CanLII) as follows:

[8] In charging a jury regarding the onus of proof for rear-end motor vehicle collisions, trial judges often use a variation of the standard liability instruction from O’Brien’s Jury Charges (1998), which provides:

A prudent motorist should drive at such rate of speed with his vehicle under such control that he is able to pull up within the range of his vision. If there is any difficulty in seeing because of weather conditions, then common sense dictates that he should travel more slowly. In other words, “if you can’t see where you’re going don’t go”. If the road is icy or slippery, then even more care should be taken. In a case where a vehicle is struck without the driver of the rear vehicle having seen it until it was too late to avoid a collision, then you should ask yourselves; (1) Was he keeping a proper lookout? (2) If he was keeping the best lookout possible, was he going too fast for the lookout that could be kept in the circumstances?”

Members of the jury, generally speaking, when one car runs into another from behind, in the absence of any excuse for such a collision, the driver of the rear car must satisfy you that the collision did not occur as a result of his negligence.

Not being able to find the publication listed anywhere under that particular name, we began to suspect that perhaps it was associated with our other more prominent precedent set of a similar name, O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms and Precedents. Search as we did though, we could find no evidence to that effect either.

So we starting asking around in our librarian circles. At first, except for references to the publication found in other cases as well, we could find no other trace.

Eventually, Jen managed to connect with someone at the National Judicial Institute, the only place we could find that actually had a copy, who had some more information on this little mystery. There is some question about whether the Jury Charges were written by Judge W. David Griffiths and later updated by Judge Joseph W. O’Brien, or vice versa, but either way it was an older set of charges from the late 1990s that seemingly had not been kept up to date, though still useful and quoted since. Since copyright and ownership was somewhat in question, it was clear that it was to remain an internal document available only to judges.

So while we couldn’t actually get our hands on a copy, we count that as a mystery solved.

Yesterday I wrote about the Thomson Reuters ProView eReference collection – what it contains, and how you can get access to it at our library. Today, I’m going to focus on a few quick primers for using the platform, and also provide some links to even better training materials. Click on any of the images below to see them a bit bigger.

Basic Navigation Tips

When you enter into the ProView platform at the CCLA Library, you will have a huge screen containing images of all of the titles we have available in our subscription. To find a title, you can scroll through the whole page (it’s organized by subject), or you can also use the box right above the images:

 

Continue reading →

We’ve been meaning to do a post on the Thomson Reuters ProView eReference platform for a long time; as it turns out, we’re going to do two posts! In this first post, I’ll talk about what that big long title (“Thomson Reuters ProView eReference”) means, what’s included in it, and how you find it here at our library. Tomorrow, I’ll post more about how to use the platform, and some great links to online tutorials.

 

Thomson Reuters ProView eReference Collection – What’s That?

This is the proper name for the online versions of some of the looseleafs published by Thomson Reuters. Some of their looseleafs are only available in Westlaw, and some are only available on the ProView platform. If that seems a little complicated to keep straight, it’s because it is! To help keep it all straight, we’ve put a sticker on all of the looseleaf binders here at the library that have online versions available. You can see a picture of that here.

What’s Included?

Currently, the CCLA library has 80 titles available in our ProView subscription. For the time being, all of these titles are also available in print in the library, but that is likely to change over the course of this year. Some of the titles include:

• Canadian Employment Law
• The Law of Costs
• Construction, Builders’ and Mechanics’ Liens in Canada
• Compensation and Duties of Estate Trustees, Guardians and Attorney
• Evidence in Family Law
• Insurance Law in Canada
• Remedies in Tort
• Law of Real Property
• And many, many more.

How Do I Access This?

The first question everyone has: can I use this from my office if it’s online? And the answer, regretfully, is no. You’ll still have to visit the library to access these online titles. On each of our public computers, you can access ProView through the CCLA Library Toolkit icon. There should be no additional steps to accessing this platform from there.

While you still have to venture into the library, many people will find the ability to search the book using keywords to be an excellent additional value. You may also appreciate the ease with which you can email excerpts of the books to yourself, or save them to a memory stick. Also, since we also have a Westlaw subscription at the library, you can easily link to case law from the book you are reading.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at how to use the ProView platform. This program is unlike Westlaw, and also unlike more traditional e-books (like those you might borrow from the library, or purchase for your Kindle or Kobo), so you’ll want to check out how to best use this service.

 

While we were preparing for the holidays and wrapping up those last minute reference questions in 2016, a cool new feature was quietly rolled out in CanLII – so quietly that we didn’t even notice until last month! If you’re a regular user of CanLII, you’ll want to check this out.

Highlighting terms within CanLII has always been a handy feature. If you’re performing a keyword search, CanLII will highlight where the words appear in the document you select and read from your search results, allowing you to scroll through the text to find those terms. Now, you can edit those terms right from within your search!

 

As in this photo, the keyword search was for “Constructive Dismissal.” The instances of that phrase in the document are highlighted in blue. Now, if you wanted to add another word or phrase, you can click on the little pencil icon next to the down arrow…

 

And a box will open, allowing you to type in another word or phrase! Hit enter… Continue reading →