Jeanne and Murray attend the Annual Risk and Insurance Management Society (Canada) Conference
Jeanne Craig and Murray Davison attended the 35th Annual Risk and Insurance Management Society (Canada) Conference in St. John’s Newfoundland on September 12th to 15th, 2009.
Effective January 1, 2010 significant changes will be implemented to the Rules of Civil Procedure
As of January 1, 2010, significant and wide sweeping changes have been made to the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure, among them: the timing and procedure for examinations for discovery, the powers of the Court on hearing summary judgement motions, increases in the monetary jurisdiction for Simplified Procedure and Small Claims Court matters. For more details, see our summary here.
Louise’s Facebook paper published in Municipal Liability Risk Management newsletter
Louise Vrebosch’s paper entitled “Use of Facebook Content in Municipal Litigation: Practical Tips and Strategies” was published in the July 2009 edition of the lexisnexis newsletter: Municipal Liability Risk Management. For a variation of the paper, click here to visit the copy found in our Library. New report compares protection of personal information on 6 major social networking sites
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Ontario has released a report, prepared by Jennifer Barrigar, comparing six major social networking sites from a privacy perspective. Notably, the author discusses the “publicness” of social networking sites and refers to the concept of “mediated public” environments, which are neither private nor public. Given the recent Ontario court decisions referring to the privacy implications of production of Facebook content in civil litigation, it would be interesting to see an argument advanced based on this theory. For a copy of the Privacy Commissioner’s report, click here. For more information on how Facebook is being treated in Ontario litigation, click here. Not appropriate to examine Mayor as officer of municipality under Rules
In a recent decision from Master Short of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, it was found that Mayor Jackson of the City of Vaughan was not one of the parties listed in Rule 31.03(2) of the Rules of Civil Procedure as persons who could be examined for discovery on behalf of a corporation. Recognizing “that the Court should not lightly overturn a party’s prima facie right to select the individual it wishes to examine,” Master Short found that the Mayor could not be examined under Rule 31.03(2) since she does not, as Mayor, have the authority to bind the corporation. Master Short noted, however, that there will be circumstances where examining the Mayor would be appropriate. For a copy of the decision, click here.