Summaries Sunday: Supreme Advocacy

• Author: Administrator
• Date: February 24, 2019

One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all appeals as well as leaves to appeal granted so you will know what the SCC will soon be dealing with (January 26 to February 22, 2019 inclusive).

Appeals

Civil Procedure/Private International Law: Foreign Judgments
Barer v. Knight Brothers LLC, 2019 SCC 13 (37594)

The jurisdiction of the Utah Court is recognized; presenting substantive arguments in a motion to dismiss, is submitting to the Utah Court’s jurisdiction in accordance with art. 3168(6) of the Civil Code of Québec, and this is sufficient here to establish any substantial connection that may be required by art. 3164, C.C.Q.

Criminal Law: Long-Term Supervision Orders; Collateral Attacks
R. v. Bird, 2019 SCC 7 (37596)

The accused here is not permitted to collaterally attack the residency condition of his Long Term Supervision Order. Two principles underlie the approach to collateral attacks on court orders: (1) importance of maintaining the rule of law and preserving the repute of the administration of justice; (2) ensuring that individuals have an effective means to challenge court orders, particularly when challenged on the basis they are not Charter compliant. Where an effective forum or mechanism is available for challenging an order, and a person takes issue with the order only after breaching it, they had not been denied the ability to fully defend against the charge if a collateral attack is refused, and this is because they had the opportunity to challenge the validity of the order through other means but failed to do so.

Criminal Law: Post-Offence Conduct
R. v. Calnen, 2019 SCC 6 (37707)

When the trial judge’s charge here is considered fairly, contextually, and as a whole, this jury was properly equipped to decide the case in the absence of a limiting instruction against general propensity reasoning. The role of appellate courts is to take a functional approach in reviewing jury charges, asking whether the charge as a whole enabled the trier of fact to decide the case according to the law and the evidence. The test is whether the jury was properly, not perfectly, instructed.

Criminal Law: Voyeurism; Reasonable Expectation of Privacy
R. v. Jarvis, 2019 SCC 10 (37833)

The high school students recorded by the accused teacher here were in circumstances in which they would reasonably have expected not to be the subject of videos predominantly focused on...