In-House Counsel
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July 25, 2024
Legal status of Tibetans migrants in Canadian refugee law
Tibetans living in exile in India, Nepal and Bhutan often call themselves stateless refugees since they lost their country following China’s invasion of Tibet in the 1950s, and they still cannot return to their Tibetan homeland due to the lack of freedom and human rights and the ongoing persecution and cultural genocide by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Tibetan plateau of the Himalayas. Their lack of freedom and risk of harm, including persecution in the form of detention, torture and even death or disappearance, is reported yearly by Freedom House, Amnesty International, the U.S. International Committee on Religious Freedom and other non-Tibetan organizations. Many of these Tibetans have come to Canada seeking refugee protection.
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July 24, 2024
Spirits suppliers seek court review of LCBO’s ‘contradictory’ pricing policies
Spirits Canada has announced that an “unavoidable legal challenge” has been caused due to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's (LCBO)’s 2023 decision to “penalize suppliers for non-compliance with contradictory pricing policies.”
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July 24, 2024
CN Rail fined $8M for two 2015 derailments that caused oil spills
The Ontario Court of Justice has ordered the Canadian National Railway Company (CN Rail) to pay $8 million in relation to two 2015 derailments that caused millions of litres of crude oil to spill.
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July 24, 2024
Federal Court of Appeal upholds CRTC decision to raise telecom access rates for third-party providers
The Federal Court of Appeal has upheld a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decision to raise the rates that large telecommunications companies can charge third-party service providers for access to their internet facilities and infrastructure.
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July 24, 2024
Duty of tech competence, AI adoption by lawyers | Connie L. Braun and Juliana Saxberg
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has dominated legal tech conversations for several years, and for good reason. Widespread consumer adoption of ChatGPT and other generative AI products has delivered a host of unprecedented legal and tech risks to Canadian entities. Governments and regulators in Canada and abroad continue to scramble to regulate the responsible use of AI tools, even though their use is already thoroughly embedded in Canadian and global business, government and legal system operations. As a result, the typical Canadian entity’s AI compliance dossier is an unfinished patchwork of aspirational codes and aging regulatory instruments that were designed when Y2K was considered a big enterprise tech risk.
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July 24, 2024
New managing partner for Aird & Berlis
Jill P. Fraser, a senior partner in Aird & Berlis’s financial services group and a long-standing member of the executive committee, the firm’s new managing partner.
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July 23, 2024
Federal Court orders broadcaster to pay $27.3M for copyright infringement of Turkish programs
The Federal Court has ordered a broadcaster to pay $27.3 million for infringing the copyrights of Turkish broadcaster Kanal D on 2,729 episodes of 22 television programs.
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July 23, 2024
Canadian securities regulators stepped up enforcement in 2023-24, driven in part by crypto schemes
Canadian securities regulators commenced 83 enforcement proceedings between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, with 27 cases of selling securities illegally making it the most common offence, according to the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) annual year-in-review report.
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July 23, 2024
Appeal court finds insured not covered for failing to notify insurer of securities fraud probe
The Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal in which the insured was not able to receive coverage or relief from forfeiture due to his delay in notifying the insurer about circumstances that would reasonably lead to a claim.
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July 23, 2024
Remote scenarios: Ontario court clarifies evidentiary requirements for manufacturing defect claim
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice recently dismissed a plaintiff’s product liability claim based on negligent manufacture and the duty to warn, for damages totalling $250,000. The decision of Pelton v. Maytag Ltd., 2024 ONSC 3016, clarifies evidentiary requirements necessary to establish a manufacturing defect claim as well as the scope of a manufacturer’s duty to warn of foreseeable risks.