University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog

Barbarians at the gate

Abstruse Goose cartoon today -

Louis CK and Rumsfeld

Donald Rumsfeld called into the Opie & Anthony radio show with comedian Louis CK guest-hosting.  Fun ensues.

 

 

Via Gothamist

Yay or Nay?

In what promises to be a very inspired (and short lived?) series, I think I may feel drawn to hold up some legislative, juristic, or otherwise "legal" excerpt for no other reason than to show it as an instance of some considerable triumph or malfunction of the temporal lobe.

Today I give you section 24 of the Divorce Act.

"A document offered in a proceeding under this Act that purports to be certified or sworn by a judge or an officer of a court shall, unless the contrary is proved, be proof of the appointment, signature or authority of the judge or officer and, in the case of a document purporting to be sworn, of the appointment, signature or authority of the person before whom the document purports to be sworn."

Non Sequitur

 

 

Irony, or ... ?

June 23, 2010: a non-destructive earthquake starts in western Quebec, not far from the Ontario border, soon hits Ottawa and is soon felt in Toronto.

June 23, 2010: a tornado strikes Midland Ontario. The CBC reports that insurers estimate the damage as much as $15M. (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/24/midland-ontario-tornado.html)

There was, of course, damage to a trailer park, too ... well, you had to know if there's a tornado involved there will usually be a trailer park, somewhere. Pictures on Youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P6-rjImayg)

June 23, 2010: also the 20th anniversary of the death of the Meech Lake Accord. If this is Mother Nature's acknowledgment of the event, is she "punishing" Ontario for the failure of the accord - if so, she's got the wrong target - or for her then gov't and MPPs being on the "yes" side of what could be viewed as executive "putsch"?

Offence: Failure to pay parking ticket within 40 seconds

Via Jalopnik comes this amusing letter an Aussie sent the City of Melbourne after being issued a parking ticket (and their response):

Misutā Robotto (II): Rose v UBC

One of the statements of claim -  - Download Rose v UBC and others - in the action discussed in the earlier  Misutā Robotto, himitsu wo shiritai  thread.

Given para. 21, had the case gone to trial, perhaps the defendants would have claimed the devil made them do it. Item (b) in the prayer for relief is interesting. Also note the complaint in para. 17.

The allegations made by Mr. Rose are ... unusual. I've pasted them, as summarized in one of the motions to dismiss, on the next screecn.

Just Deserts and Oh, Henry!

A loaned $200,000 to B under demand promissory notes. A and B agreed that B would pay the interest in ways that enabled A to avoid declaring the interest as income. A didn't declare it. A's heirs continued that practice after A died. B repaid part of the principal - about $67,000-  but eventually stopped paying the interest and didn't repay the principal. A's heir sued. Their action for repayment of the principal and payment of the unpaid interest was dismissed on the basis the loan was part of an illegal arrangement and entirely unenforceable.

Roll Them Bones

Consider a reductio.

F.H. v. McDougall, 2008 SCC 53 at para. 46, [2008] 3 S.C.R. 41.

"Similarly, evidence must always be sufficiently clear, convincing and cogent to satisfy the balance of probabilities test.  But again, there is no objective standard to measure sufficiency.  In serious cases, like the present, judges may be faced with evidence of events that are alleged to have occurred many years before, where there is little other evidence than that of the plaintiff and defendant.  As difficult as the task may be, the judge must make a decision.  If a responsible judge finds for the plaintiff, it must be accepted that the evidence was sufficiently clear, convincing and cogent to that judge that the plaintiff satisfied the balance of probabilities test."

(emphasis added). We will leave the circularity and tautology(?) for another day.

TO JD OR NOT JD (2010)

A number of Canadian law schools have changed the name of the first degree they grant from LLB to JD and have offered graduates from the BJD days the chance to trade-in their old model for the new (for a price, of course.) Here's a list of an answers that might help some of you decide which way to go, now, and that you Alberta types might consider whenever the tide reaches you. 

The list is done in "standard" Letterman form - but 20, not 10 - call it a double-Letterman. The meaning of some may not be as obvious as the others. In some cases, the numbering is a hint.

Contest With Prize: But Be Careful What You Wish For (2)

Repost with minor alterations - original posted Dec 25/09

The carrot to get current U of A Faculty of Law students to read this post is that it outlines a contest, with a prize at the end, open only to them. Some might consider the prize worth the effort. The others are vegetarians or Vegans. If need be, we'll work out a compromise.

The contest will close midnight (Edmonton time) January 30, 2010.

__________________________________

This posting is intended mostly for lawyer and law-student readers of the blog, or those with an equivalent background. It presumes the reader has a level of familiarity with concepts I don't mention.

I'm told that academic lawyers write articles about legal matters in scholarly journals both for tenure purposes and in the hope that their views will influence the development of the law in what the writer believes is the proper direction. That is, the hope is that that a judge in a position to make a difference will read the article and have an epiphany. I'm told some write in the hope they will be cited (see tenure).

Apple 1, Lawyers 0

Birdsong et al. v. Apple Inc., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, No. 08-18841.

On Dec 30, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the class action which claimed that Apple iPods were defective in the manner alleged in the action: that the  ”iPod is defective because it poses an unreasonable risk of noise induced hearing loss to its users.”

Does this mean that Mr/Ms Birdsong's song is now a sad song?

Listen (if you can hear) to Pete Townsend.

As Nigel would have said: News at 11.

But not elvenses. Well, Nigel might have said that, too, but for another reason.

Addendum

One tangentially related view from south of the border. 

A Purifying Ordeal or Just An Ordeal?

Consider:

Cordell v. Second Clanfield Properties Ltd., [1969] 2 Ch. 9 (Ch. D.), at page 16 per Megarry J.:

"The process of authorship is entirely different from that of judicial decision. The author, no doubt, has the benefit of a broader and comprehensive survey of his chosen subject as a whole, together with a lengthy period of gestation, and intermittent opportunities for reconsideration. But he is exposed to the peril of yielding to preconceptions, and he lacks the advantage of that impact and sharpening of focus which the detailed facts of a particular case bring to the judge. Above all, he has to form his ideas without the aid of the purifying ordeal of skilled argument on the specific facts of a contested case." 

Maybe so. One might well challenge Megarry J.'s thesis. (Some one will, in due course,)

In the meantime, though, there's the other hand (but not yet the third): sometimes there's apparently no aid whatsoever.

"Since neither counsel cited the binding decisions of the Court of Appeal (or indeed, any authority at all), neither party is entitled to costs of this motion."

Wilson v. Bobbie, 2006 ABQB 22 at para. 42 per Slatter J (now Slatter JA)

Pervasive Ineptness

 Arts & Letters Daily is an aggregator par excelllence for links to information and links of all kinds. Another is the Voice of the Shuttle. VoS describes itself as a "website for humanities research". A reference in the AL&D "Articles of Note" column is to a new article about the Peter Principle and studies that have been done since the book The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong came out in 1969. The A&LD summary, taken from the paragraph in the article under the heading "Pervasively inept" is: "The 'Peter principle' undoubtedly appeals to the cynic in all of us. It is also quite possibly true, if subsequent academic studies are to be believed." Who'd have guessed.?

Contest With Prize But Be Careful What You Wish For

Reposted with minor alterations - January 7, 2010

The carrot to get current U of A Faculty of Law students to read this post is that it outlines a contest, with a prize at the end, open only to them. Some might consider the prize worth the effort. The others are vegetarians or Vegans. If need be, we'll work out a compromise.

The contest will close midnight (Edmonton time) January 30, 2010.

---------------------

This posting is intended mostly for lawyer and law-student readers of the blog, or those with an equivalent background. It presumes the reader has a level of familiarity with concepts I don't mention.

I'm told that academic lawyers write articles about legal matters in scholarly journals both for tenure purposes and in the hope that their views will influence the development of the law in what the writer believes is the proper direction. That is, the hope is that that a judge in a position to make a difference will read the article and have an epiphany. I'm told some write in the hope they will be cited (see tenure).

I am not (formally) an academic so don't need to worry about tenure. However, I have written an article or three in the hope that a judge in a position to make a difference would ... etc.

One such article appeared about 4 1/2 years ago under the extremely mellifluous and just somewhat pointed title “The Snell Inference And Material Contribution: Defining The Indefinable And Hunting The Causative Snark – A Not Excessively Subtle and Theoretical Examination of Proof of Factual Causation in Canadian Tort Law". The colloquial name for the piece, for reasons relating to both the title and the contents of the article is "Snark". For those who care, a citation for the article is (2005) 30 Advocates' Quarterly 1.

SNL does Obama

Law Firm Bonuses

It is law firm bonus season in the US. While many are expecting bonus levels to be much lower than prior years, no one expected them to be this ridiculous.

Cartman or Walken

Who does a better job of covering Lady Gaga's Poker Face - South Park's Cartman or Christopher Walken? Listen and vote over at Josh Blackman 's blog. 

Also if you are an academic on the job market this year, here are some questions you 'should' ask the recruiting committee. OK - maybe only ask after you have one job in the bag.

Non Sequitur

Today's 'Non Sequitur' cartoon:

Feel the Pain!

In addition to the Free Speech Constitutional grounds for protecting swearing (actually the status of swearing as constitutionally protected speech is not necessarily that clear), there is now a new reason to protect it: it reduces pain! So imagine the next time a client is charged with disorderly conduct, you could invoke the constitutional right to be free from pain defense.