Legal Research

Legal Citation Question on Indicating Jurisdiction in Case Law Citations

By Ted Tjaden

I have a question regarding including jurisdiction when citing a case that cites to a Quicklaw version.

Rule 3.2.10 of the McGill Guide states that “if the jurisdiction is evident from the name of any reporter, reference is made only to the level of court.”

As such, one must include the abbreviation for Ontario in the following citation since the Dominion Law Reports publish decisions from across Canada, and without the jurisdicational indication, the reader does not know which jurisdiction is involved:

McGrath v. MacLean (1979) 95 D.L.R. (3d) 144 (Ont. C.A.)

However, in the following citation, would you include the abbreviation for Ontario (note: the case and citation are fictitious):

Without: Smith v. Jones, [1999] O.J. No. 1234 (C.A.)

or

With: Smith v. Jones, [1999] O.J. No. 1234 (Ont. C.A.)?

I have tended to not include the jurisdictional indication, assuming that readers know that “O.J.” stands for “Ontario Judgments.”

Am I assuming too much? Technically, Rule 3.2.10 refers to “reporters” and not “reporter or database” so I assume the technically correct answer is to include the jurisdictional abbreviation in my Quicklaw example above.

What would you do?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 07, 2009 (boomark / email).