Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

• Author: Administrator
• Date: December 12, 2018

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Sokoloff v. Mahoney, 2018 ONSC 7223

[44] The Plaintiff’s claim seeks payment of punitive damages on the basis that the negligence lawsuit was initiated in bad faith in an effort to bully the Plaintiff into walking away from its legitimate fee account. The Amended Statement of Claim further alleges that Mr. Falconeri and his law firm have done this in the past to other lawyers.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Cadieux v. Cloutier, 2018 ONCA 903

[39] The first issue was the basis upon which deductions should be made, specifically, the extent of matching required when deducting SABs from the jury award. Should there be a strict matching of items in the jury award against the SABs benefits received, on an “apples to apples” basis, as Cadieux contended? Or, should the three different statutory categories of SABs (income replacement benefits, health benefits, and other pecuniary benefits) be regarded as silos, with deductions being made from the applicable silo, without a more precise matching of individual benefits within those silos against the identical heads of damages in the jury award?

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. R. v. Vice Media Canada Inc., 2018 SCC 53

[1] Over 25 years ago, in Canadian Broadcasting Corp. v. Lessard, 1991 CanLII 49 (SCC), [1991] 3 S.C.R. 421, and its companion case Canadian Broadcasting Corp. v. New Brunswick (Attorney General), 1991 CanLII 50 (SCC), [1991] 3 S.C.R. 459, this Court established a general framework governing applications by the police for search warrants — and, as recognized in subsequent cases, production orders — relating to the media. This framework, reaffirmed just eight years ago in R. v. National Post, 2010 SCC 16 (CanLII), [2010] 1 S.C.R. 477, seeks to balance two competing concepts: the state’s interest in the investigation and prosecution of crime, and the media’s right to privacy in gathering and disseminating the news.

[2] The appellants, a media organization and one of its journalists, say that this framework is not working. They claim that, in practice, it serves as nothing more than a “rubber stamp” permitting the police to access materials in the hands of the media. They submit that it must therefore be reformed — perhaps even abandoned entirely — to provide stronger...