Ottawa Blog Roll: January 2017

Posted on by Brenda Lauritzen

Please find below links to blog posts or articles authored by the Ottawa legal community in January.

Civil Litigation

When Doctors Are Actually “Hired Guns”
– Frank Van Dyke, Van Dyke Injury Law Blog

Civil Lawyers Raise the Alarm on Case Delays
– Andrea Girones, Girones Lawyers

Construction Liens – Vacating Your Lien Does Not Mean Losing It!
– Patrick Simon, Vice and Hunter LLP

Condominium Law

Condo Manager Licensing in Ontario: The “General” licence
– Rod Escayola, Condo Adviser

Condo Managers With a Limited Licence Will Have to Work Under Supervision
– Rod Escayola, Condo Adviser

Who Will Be Exempt from Mandatory Licensing of Condo Managers?
– Rod Escayola, Condo Adviser

Licensing of Condominium Managers – Who Needs to be Licensed? (Blog No. 1 in a Series)
– Davidson Houle Allen LLP

Licensing of Condominium Managers- Licensing Timeframes and Requirements (Blog No. 2 in a Series)
– Davidson Houle Allen LLP

Licensing of Condominium Managers-Restrictions on Managers who have a Limited Condominium Management Licence (Blog No. 3 in a Series)
– Davidson Houle Allen LLP

Licensing of Condominium Managers-Who can obtain a licence to be a condominium manager? (Blog No. 4 in a Series)
– Davidson Houle Allen LLP

Licensing of Condominium Managers- Six Questions Answered (Blog No. 5 in a Series)
– Davidson Houle Allen LLP

Licensing of Condominium Managers-What are some of the statutory obligations placed upon licensees? (Blog No. 6 in a Series)
– Davidson Houle Allen LLP

Suspended Access Equipment- New OHSA Regulation Amendments in Effect January 1, 2017
– Davidson Houle Allen LLP

Corporate Commercial Law

Ontario Court of Appeal confirms Two-Year Limitation Period to Enforce American Judgments in Ontario
– Shawn O’Connor & Allison Russell, Startup.Buildup.Sellup.

It is a Governance Issue or a Management Issue? An Often Made Misdiagnosis
– Michael A. Chambers, Maclaren Corlett

Criminal Law

January 2017 Criminal Law Round-up
– Anne-Marie McElroy, McElroy Law

Justice Denied: Delay in Criminal Court and the Right to a Speedy Trial
– Anne-Marie McElroy, McElroy Law

You Are Not The Reasonable Person
– Louise Tanset, Mack’s Criminal Law

Continue reading →

Recently Published Ottawa Decisions

Posted on by Jennifer Walker

Find below recently published Ottawa decisions, available for free through CanLII.org.

Family Matters

Boyer v Brown (2017 ONSC 501)
child support — evidence — impute income — expenses — motion
Justice L. Sheard

Gibeau v Parker and Rivard (2017 CanLII 2296)
costs — table child support — settlement — pay — successful
Justice M. Shelston

Bailliu v Chaloux (2017 ONSC 628)
spousal support — costs — offers to settle — lump — child support
Justice A. Doyle

Civil Matters

Walker v Hulse, Playfair and McGarry (2017 ONSC 358)
aggravated damages — termination — dismissal — deputy — distress
Justice R. Beaudoin

Soulliere (By his Guardian) v Intact Insurance (2017 ONSC 419)
structured portion of the settlement — non-structured portion of the settlement — draft — endorsement — payee
Justice S. Corthorn

Continue reading →

Fighting the Good Link Rot Fight

Posted on by Brenda Lauritzen

One of the things that keeps librarians up at night is something known as link rot (don’t get us even started on “fake news” and information literacy). There was an article highlighting this issue in the NY Times a couple of years ago, but basically, link rot happens when you cite something on the web that ends up moving its URL, changing its form somehow, or being deleted altogether. As the internet grows naturally from its infancy and more things change, it becomes harder and harder to identify sources, and more and more links lead to dead ends.

This is happening in case law and the legal world as well as the scholarly one, and you can understand how this might be important when the footnotes and links are referring to the basis of legal precedent. The Times article identified that in 2013, a study found that 49% of their Supreme Court decisions links no longer worked. There have been a couple initiatives to try and rectify this since then, the largest of which being Perma.cc, which archives and gives permanent links to resources so that they will no longer change.

Today, the Supreme Court of Canada revealed a similar project they have been working on, their depository of Internet Sources Cited in SCC Judgments (1998 – 2016), which contains permanent links to documents referred to in SCC decisions. Here is their news release regarding the service:

January 26, 2017

OTTAWA – Recognizing that web pages or websites that the Court cites in its judgments may subsequently vary in content or be discontinued, the Office of the Registrar of the SCC has located and archived the content of most online sources that had been cited by the Court between 1998 and 2016. These sources were captured with a content as close as possible to the original content cited. Links to the archived content can be found here: Internet Sources Cited in SCC Judgments (1998 – 2016).

From 2017, online internet sources cited in the “Authors Cited” section in SCC judgments will be captured and archived.  When a judgment cites such a source, an “archived version” link will be provided to facilitate future research.

An important step forward. Hopefully we will see similar initiatives by other courts to help address this issue.

Newly Received Materials from LSUC CPD

Posted on by Emily Shearer

Below are some of the most recent CPD materials added to the library collection. Each title links to the book record where you can view more details and the full table of contents. All materials are available in print at the library, or if you’re interested in only a couple of articles, feel free to email us a request for a scanned copy.

The Six-Minute Family Law Lawyer 2016 (November 29, 2016)

  • Defeating claims for the partition and sale of the matrimonial home / Cheryl Suann Williams
  • SCC watch 2016 / Martha McCarthy and Linsey Sherman
  • What’s new in collaborative law? / Brian Galbraith
  • Six recent custody and access cases you should know / Daniel S. Melamed and Jennifer L. Wilson

19th Annual Estates and Trusts Summit (November 3-4, 2016)

  • Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) issues in estate and guardianship litigation / Nimali Gamage
  • Strategies for success in “doomed” dependants’ support claims / Angela Casey and Angelique Moss
  • Case update : 2015-2016 / K. Thomas Grozinger
  • Changing trustees / Jordan Atin, Lesley Donsky, and Elizabeth Legge

Civil Litigation Practice Basics 2016 (October 5, 2016)

  • The initial client meeting and starting and defending the case / Andrew Kalamut
  • Pre-trial conferences and settlements: the basics / Andrew Winton
  • Preparing for trial and post-trial issues / Dena Varah

5th Annual Human Rights Summit (December 8, 2016)

  • Testing for drug and alcohol in the workplace / Bruce Demers
  • Addressing systemic discrimination through the law: a reflective and questioning perspective / Michael Gottheil
  • Major case law update: focus on disability and harassment / Melanie McNaught
  • Accommodating workplace stress, mental disability and other invisible disabilities / Anne M. Gregory

Research Tip: Using Google to Site Search

Posted on by Brenda Lauritzen

In the course of online legal research (especially legislative) it’s not uncommon that you come across a website’s built-in search engine that refuses to cooperate with what you want it to do. Whether that be a lack of filters, spurious results, or just a bad user interface, there are many offenders (especially, sadly, on our government websites). This at best can lead to frustration and at worst to wasting hours of time not being able to find what you’re looking for. Fortunately, there’s a underused method to leverage Google’s search engines to assist, which I’ll detail below.

But let me start by giving an example. Say we’re looking for Hansard Debates or Committee Proceedings on the Ontario Legislative Assembly website that discuss the Police Services Amendment Act of 1997. I was able to pull up the page for the bill, as seen below, but I unfortunately soon discover that the Act was earlier than when they start directly linking out to any related debates or committee reports from that page.

Knowing, however, that they do have the Debates and Committee Documents online dating back to at least the 1970s, there must be a way to find them. You could try using their built-in search engine at the top right, or even their Advanced Hansard search, but by doing so I’ve usually found myself wading through multiple long documents, most of which do not pertain to what I am looking for.

Fortunately, there’s a quicker way, and Google can be used to do a lot of the heavy lifting here. You can easily narrow a generic Google search to search only a single website. To do this, in a regular google search just type in:

site:http://www.ontla.on.ca/ police services act 105

This will search all of the Ontario Legislative Assembly’s website for the keywords Police Services Act and 105 (I used the bill number to narrow it down from other amending acts). Voila, you can see below our more relevant results linking directly to committee reports, in the usual Google format we are familiar with.

You can do this with any website whose search engine might not be the best. Just use:

site:[url] [keywords]

And let Google do its thing.

#ThrowbackThursday: Ottawa Public Library

Posted on by Jennifer Walker

There was an intriguing op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen this week regarding the hot-button issue of the location of a new Ottawa Public Library main branch. In a piece by architect Allan Teramura, the argument is made for building a new show-stopping library in Confederation Park (which, oh hey, is right across the street from the Courthouse!). I’m personally a huge fan of the current darling of the library world – the Halifax Public Library central branch, mentioned in the op-ed – and if we can have something of that caliber in our city, it would be truly exciting.

This lead me to thinking about the OPL main branch, and particularly what I had heard of but had never seen for myself – pictures of the previous main branch, which was a Carnegie library. Carnegie libraries were libraries built at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries with money donated from Andrew Carnegie. If you’ve never heard of these, here’s the wiki (and with 125 built in Canada, there’s a decent chance there was a Carnegie library near you at some point! Here’s some more information on Canadian Carnegies specifically.). Ottawa’s Carnegie library was opened in 1906, at the same location as the current main branch, and this is probably my favourite picture of it:

Swoon! This blog post from Unforgotten Ottawa has a great collection of pictures, and a lot more information on this library, including why and when it was eventually replaced with the building we have today.

Lexis Advance Quicklaw Updates

Posted on by Jennifer Walker

If you use Lexis Advance Quicklaw at the CCLA Library (or any of the other Ontario courthouse libraries), you may be delighted to hear about some of the new content included in our subscription. As of the beginning of the year, we now have access to a considerable amount of international case law. Available at no additional cost to you, you can now download decisions from the following case collections:

  • All England Law Reports
  • Northern Ireland Law Reports
  • Scottish Civil Law Reports
  • European Court of Human Rights Cases
  • Australian Law Reports
  • New Zealand Law Reports
  • U.S. Decisions from the Supreme Court, Appeal Courts, and District Courts
  • And more!

As always, you’ll have to come into the library to make us of this subscription (no remote access, we’re afraid), or you can get in touch and we’ll see how we can help you remotely. Also, if you’d like some training on using Quicklaw (remember: there’s a new platform interface!), we’ll be holding a training session on March 22nd here in the library. You can RSVP for this free session at this link.

Recently Published Ottawa Decisions

Posted on by Jennifer Walker

Find below recently published Ottawa decisions, available for free through CanLII.org.

Family Matters

Deslauriers c Pommainville (2016 ONCS 8149)
arbitrage — dépens — motion — école — garderie
Juge A. Doyle

Birkett v Love (2016 ONSC 8148)
income — mid-range of spousal support — company — variation — dividends
Justice A. Doyle

Deslauriers v Russell (2016 ONSC 7931)
offer to settle — three-hour questioning — costs — school — motion
Justice L. Sheard

Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa v J.S (2017 ONSC 108)
children — maternal grandparents — access — father — motion for summary
Justice M. Shelston

Tanner v Tanner (2016 ONSC 7182)
spousal support — pension — income — marriage — amount
Justice L. Sheard

Pitre v Lalande (2017 ONSC 208)
child support — income — share of post-secondary education expenses — amount — motion
Justice S. Corthorn

Pey v Pey (2017 ONSC 285)
security for costs — motion to vary — nonpayment — spousal — child support
Justice P. Kane

McCormick v Burns (2017 ONSC 289)
child support — university — arrears — student loan debt — adult
Justice P. Kane

Civil Matters

Heerkens v Lindsay Agricultural Society (2017 ONSC 240)
cross-motion for leave to amend — based in unjust enrichment — two-year limitation period — invoice — contract
Justice S. Corthorn

Continue reading →

New Titles – December 2016 & January 2017

Posted on by Emily Shearer

Along with the new year, we’ve been receiving lots of new editions of titles. We’ve also received titles that are entirely new to our collection, such as The Lawyer’s Guide to the Forensic Sciences and Parliamentary Immunity in Canada.

Another notable addition is the 6-volume set of Canada’s Residential Schools : The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. We have copies in both English and French, which can be found in the New Books section at the front desk.

Check out our list of new acquisitions below:

Federal Courts Practice 2017 (Carswell)

McLeod’s Ontario Family Law Rules Annotated 2016-2017 (Carswell)

The 2016-2017 Annotated Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Carswell)

The 2017 Annotated Ontario Family Law Act (Carswell)

Ontario Family Law Practice, 2017 Edition (LexisNexis)

The 2017 Annotated Divorce Act (Carswell)

The 2017 Annotated Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of Canada (Carswell)

Annotated Ontario Rules of Criminal Practice 2017 (Carswell)

Les droits linguistiques au Canada, 3e édition (Carswell)

The 2017 Annotated Ontario Employment Standards Act (Carswell)

Police Services Act of Ontario: An Annotated Guide, Third Edition (Canada Law Book)

Musicians and the Law in Canada, 4th Edition (Carswell)

Aboriginal Law: Supreme Court of Canada Decisions (Carswell)

Military Justice in Action: Annotated National Defence Legislation, Second Edition (Carswell)

Parliamentary Immunity in Canada (LexisNexis)

Law of the Constitution: The Distribution of Powers (LexisNexis)

Annotated Ontario Securities Legislation, 45th Edition, 2017 (LexisNexis)

The Lawyer’s Guide to the Forensic Sciences (Irwin Law)

Cross-Examination: The Art of the Advocate, 4th Edition (LexisNexis)

Statutory Interpretation, 3rd Edition (Irwin Law)

Conflict of Laws, 2nd Edition (Irwin Law)

Public Lands and Resources Law in Canada (Irwin Law)

The Law of Charitable and Not-for-Profit Organizations, 5th Edition (LexisNexis)

Conduct of a Lien Action 2017 (Carswell)

Continue reading →

Upcoming Research Training

Posted on by Brenda Lauritzen

We’re busy planning our training for this year, and are happy to announce the following upcoming sessions are now open for registration! All of our training is open to any member of the legal community, and can count for 1 hour Substantive CPD each (LSUC). We hope to see you there!

HeinOnline Webinar

February 23, 2017, 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Join us for a lunchtime training webinar on HeinOnline, a legal research tool that LSUC lawyers can use for free from your home or office! In this session you will learn about the varying wealth of legal materials available in this database and how to access them quickly and efficiently. We will also cover how to browse and download articles and historical legislation, and how to save time by optimizing your searches.
Location: Online
Cost: 10$
Register here!

Lexis Advance Quicklaw Training

March 22, 2017, 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Quicklaw’s new research platform, Lexis Advance, has arrived! In this session, learn to search Quicklaw’s collection of Canadian primary and secondary sources using a new design that features a streamlined single intuitive search box. As well, you will learn how selecting favorite sources or pre-search filters can help narrow your starting point. Discover how to search by name, by source or topic, citation or keyword; navigate and refine search results; deliver documents; and note up cases and statutes.
Location: CCLA Library, 161 Elgin Street, Suite 2004
Cost: Free
Register here!

WestlawNext Training

April 6, 2017, 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Skip the keyword search! Learn how to use the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, Canadian Abridgment, and KeyCite features to very quickly narrow and find the most relevant case law, legislation, and commentary that you need. Westlaw basics will also be reviewed. There is no charge for this session.
Location: CCLA Library, 161 Elgin Street, Suite 2004
Cost: Free
Register here!