International Law

Toronto's Security Theatre

Posted on June 28, 2010
Is there anything in Toronto's history to suggest that fencing off most of downtown Toronto was even remotely necessary to adequately secure the G20 conference or to provide due protection for visiting world leaders? Plainly, the answer is no.The Harper security kabuki was bound to be taken as a constitutional affront by Toronto's law-abiding citizens and as a provocation by peaceful protesters who have every lawful right to make their voices heard...

G20 Security: What Side of the Fence Are You On?

Posted on June 27, 2010
For G20 summit delegations, Toronto, thankfully, remains a safe haven. Outside the security perimeter, however, for the downtown business operators, peaceful demonstrators, residents and passers-by who have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Gulf Oil Spill: How Bad Is It?

Posted on June 16, 2010
In the video below from Bloomberg News, oil indistry "insider" Matthew Simmons, chair of the Ocean Energy Institute and a former energy advisor to Geoerge W. Bush, postulates a very frightening assessment of the Gulf oil spill.He asserts that independent scientific evidence now indicates the leak is currently gushing 120,000 barrels per day, and suggests an "oil lake" beneath the water could be covering as much as 40% of the entire Gulf of Mexico...

Ontario Reports Online (Revisited)

Posted on June 16, 2010
Precedent now has an article online regarding the arrival in April of the digital Ontario Reports. I have a few, brief comments quoted in this article.See: News: Ontario Reports go online My expanded take on the new OR's is found in our April 8, 2010 post, The Digital Ontario Reports (Fail)...

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Bill 168: Ontario Workplace Harassment and Violence Legislation In Force

Posted on June 15, 2010
Bill 168, an Act to amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act with respect to violence and harassment in the workplace, comes into force today.Our previous report on the Bill's requirements is here.As noted by Ogilvie Renault's Mary J. Gleason and Richard J...

Oil Catastrophe Updated : June 9, 2010 Aerial Video

Posted on June 11, 2010
Via: Florida Oil Spill Law- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net EMPLOYMENT LAW ? CIVIL LITIGATION ? WILLS AND ESTATES ? FAMILY LAW & DIVORCEORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG ? SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG

Check out this Guitar Player...

Posted on June 11, 2010
Botswana's Ronnie Moipolai, from Kopong village in the Kweneng district:(h/t - Jennifer Smith, who is having her own brush with viral, musical immortality this week...)- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net EMPLOYMENT LAW ? CIVIL LITIGATION ? WILLS AND ESTATES ? FAMILY LAW & DIVORCEORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG ? SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG

The Oil Counterspin Continues

Posted on June 11, 2010
CNN: Not all the oil in the Gulf is coming from BP's spillYes, really. It's coming from ships that leak oil and from Mother Nature herself.It must be true. We heard it on CNN.- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw...

Coming Soon: The Conservative Party Infomercial Channel?

Posted on June 11, 2010
Warren Kinsella is surprisingly too kind to his friend, Kory Teneycke, a Conservative party stalwart who has made application to the CRTC to bring a Fox-News style cable channel to Canada's airwaves.Mr. Kinsella simply could have pointed out the obvious - this appears little more than a barely-veiled attempt to launch a Conservative Party infomercial channel, not a news channel at all...

Long Island Judge Jails Mother for Parental Alienation

Posted on June 08, 2010
A New York Superior Court judge has sentenced a mother to six weekends in jail for civil contempt, finding she engaged in a pattern of alienating behaviour, including false allegations of sexual abuse, calculated to interfere with her former husband's scheduled time and relationship with their children...

Breaking: Charges Withdrawn Against Michael Bryant

Posted on May 25, 2010
According to CTV News:TORONTO ? The Crown has withdrawn charges against former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant in death of a cyclist.Bryant was charged last August with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous driving in the death of bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard...

Hardly a Hiatus

Posted on May 25, 2010
Sorry for the reduced postings of late. Truth is, the lawyering part of my job does make occasional demands on my time that require blogging to take a back seat, at least for brief periods. We'll be back to full speed, soon enough. In the meanwhile, check our Twitter updates for the latest legal developments...

On Facebook and Privacy:

Posted on May 20, 2010
Quotable:"Facebook needs to have a few very simple high-level controls" so users can keep data private, said Peter Eckersley, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The company, he said, should stop acting as if "they have a mission to make all of our private lives public...

Alberta Tribunal Addresses the "Great Prima Facie Debate" on Family Status Workplace Accomodation

Posted on May 17, 2010
Donna Seale (as always) has a comprehensive report at Human Rights in the Workplace on an Alberta human rights ruling that requires working parents to reasonably exhaust alternative child care options before an employer will be required to accommodate child care requirements affected by new night shift assignments...

Open Book: Site Searches Unsecured Facebook Posts

Posted on May 15, 2010
A new search service, Open Book, demonstrates the privacy threat arising when Facebook users fail to carefully adjust their security settings. Among other concerns, their status updates become publicly searchable.While the Open Book search for "toronto lawyer" doesn't yield too much embarrassing personal detail, other searches certainly do...

McClatchy: Criminal Charges Likely In Gulf Oil Catastrophe

Posted on May 13, 2010
Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers:WASHINGTON ? Federal investigators are likely to file criminal charges against at least one of the companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico spill, raising the prospects of significantly higher penalties than a current $75 million cap on civil liability, legal experts say...

The Slippery Slope

Posted on May 13, 2010
Or not...(via Andrew Sullivan)- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net EMPLOYMENT LAW ? CIVIL LITIGATION ? WILLS AND ESTATES ? FAMILY LAW & DIVORCEORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG ? SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG

Video: BP Oil Slick

Posted on May 12, 2010
An aerial view of the BP oil slick, ground zero. More on the underlying political causes of this disaster from Sex, Lies and Oil Spills, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr:..The absence of an acoustical regulator -- a remotely triggered dead man's switch that might have closed off BP's gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) -- was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team...

Kagan: Is She or Isn't She?

Posted on May 12, 2010
Yawn.(Which pretty much sums up my reaction to the entire debate on this nomination)- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net EMPLOYMENT LAW ? CIVIL LITIGATION ? WILLS AND ESTATES ? FAMILY LAW & DIVORCEORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG ? SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG

Thoughts on the Facebook "Like" Button (And Rats)

Posted on May 09, 2010
I described my first take on the Facebook "Like" button, which we installed at Wise Law Blog last weekend, in discussion this week with Omar Ha-Redeye.*Lo and behold, Slaw's Simon Fodden (in a wholly different context) has paraphased my conclusions far better than I ever could have:[T]agging is the practice that some people have of making their distinctive mark on public objects ? a pathetic human version, perhaps, of a pet?s urge to pee on lampposts and the like...

Former SCC Justice John Major Speaks Out Against Bilingual Court Bill

Posted on May 09, 2010
Former Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Major spoke out earlier this week against Bill C-232, legislation now before the Senate that would require that all future appointees to the Supreme Court be functionally bilingual. As reported by the Ottawa Citizen:The issue, which has quietly simmered for about two years, has erupted into fierce debate in legal and language-rights circles, with retired Supreme Court judge John Major leading the charge against the pending legislation...

Happy Mother's Day (With Loggins and Messina)

Posted on May 09, 2010
Who knew? Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina are back together, after 30 years. Here's one for all the Moms out there: - Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net EMPLOYMENT LAW ? CIVIL LITIGATION ? WILLS AND ESTATES ? FAMILY LAW & DIVORCEORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG ? SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG

The Social Media Counter

Posted on May 09, 2010
This "live" graphic certainly makes its point on the ubiquitousness of social media in our modern lives: - Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net EMPLOYMENT LAW ? CIVIL LITIGATION ? WILLS AND ESTATES ? FAMILY LAW & DIVORCEORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG ? SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG

Video: David Frum - "This is What Success in the War on Terror Looks Like"

Posted on May 09, 2010
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net EMPLOYMENT LAW ? CIVIL LITIGATION ? WILLS AND ESTATES ? FAMILY LAW & DIVORCEORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG ? SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG

Video: Should Accused Terrorists Be Permitted to "Lawyer Up?"

Posted on May 09, 2010
New York Times writer David Brooks argues, "sometimes you just need to trust the people in authority to make the decisions." As Digby put it, "I think this says something fairly alarming about the current state of our politics."- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www...

The Argument for a Bilingual Supreme Court of Canada

Posted on May 06, 2010
Jean Leclair, professor of constitutional law at the Université de Montréal, delivers a forceful argument in today's Montreal Gazette in favour of legislation, currently before the Senate, requiring that future Supreme Court of Canada appointees be functionally bilingual:Bilingualism for Supreme Court justices is necessary not just from a symbolic standpoint; it is an issue of competence...

140Law - May 6, 2010 Edition

Posted on May 06, 2010
It has been quite a while - last New Year's Eve, to be exact -since our last installment of 140Law (formerly Legally Tweeting), a recurring feature on this blog, revisiting our recent Twitter postings.This is largely because we now feature our live Twitter updates right here on our main page, and I certainly would like to avoid being redundant...

James Morton: Ontario Litigation Has Become an "Elaborate Game of Chicken"

Posted on May 06, 2010
James C. Morton, a Toronto litigator, law professor and author of Morton's Musings law blog, on delays in Ontario civil proceedings, from an op-ed in today's Toronto Star:[T]he real problem leading to delay is the uncertainty and hazard of trial. The costs of going to trial have vastly outpaced inflation...

A Victory for Free Speech?

Posted on May 05, 2010
A Washington State jury finds that First Amendment protections shield a school newspaper that published intimate details of four high school students' sexual histories - and named names.- Garry J. Wise, Toronto Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www...

Warman and Fournier: Divisional Court Protects Online Anonymity, Overturns Motion Court Ruling

Posted on May 05, 2010
Ontario's Divisional Court has overturned a March 25, 2009 motions court ruling in Warman v. Fournier that threatened to weaken the ability of Canadian writers and activists to maintain a cloak of online anonymity. At the 2009 motion, the Plaintiff in a defamation suit sought disclosure of the email addresses and distinct ip addresses of certain anonymous writers of allegedly defamatory comments on a far-right website and message-boardThe Plaintiff sought disclosure of this information in order to identify the incognito posters...

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