Law Commons^™

Community Justice Services: Models From Around The World, Lisa Moore

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

This document examines community justice services. It highlights approaches and models for local justice outreach and legal assistance effectuated by organizations around the world. The organizations profiled in this document all provide legal assistance in some form to underserved, underprivileged, vulnerable, and/or marginalized populations. In many cases, geographic location is an important factor determining who can access legal help, but it is not the only factor or necessarily a prerequisite. Across the diverse community justice services included in this document, legal assistance is provided virtually, in-person, by phone, or in hybrid formats to individuals living within or beyond a given …

Strengths And Opportunities For Sustainability, Ab Currie

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

At the mid-point of this three-year pilot project, the evidence suggests that the Mobile Rural Law Van is accomplishing its primary objective of better meeting the needs of people in rural Wellington County and North Halton. Is the success after two summers and one winter of operation sustainable? Sustainability is about more than just money, more than cost and about cost per person served. Sustainability depends on how the project operates and how it is connected with the community being served. This paper identifies the non-monetary factors that make the Law Van project sustainable, suggesting adjustments that might be made …

From Serving The Needs Of The Few To Serving The Needs Of The Many, Ab Currie

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

From the outset, the objective of the Rural Mobile Law Van project has been to expand service in underserved rural areas, first to rural Wellington County in the summer 2019 pilot project and then in the second three-year phase of the project from 2021 to 2024 to Wellington County and to the adjacent North Halton area as well. The mobile law van operates between May and the end of October. During the fall and winter when Canadian weather becomes too inclement for an outdoor service the winter “law van” moves to various indoor venues in the same towns where the …

Community-Based Justice Research (Cbjr) Project: Exploring Community-Based Services, Costs And Benefits For People-Centered Justice, Trevor C. W. Farrow, Ab Currie

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

The CBJR Project is a collaborative international initiative featuring exciting new research exploring the costs and benefits of community-based justice. The CBJR Project partners include the Katiba Institute in Kenya, the Center for Alternative Policy Research & Innovation in Sierra Leone and the Centre for Community Justice & Development in South Africa, with collaboration and support from the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice and the International Development Research Centre.

Since 2018, the CBJR Project partners have been working to learn more about the benefits, costs and opportunities of providing and scaling various community-based justice services and initiatives, as well as …

Community-Based Justice Initiatives Infographic, Lisa Moore

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

No abstract provided.

Lloyd And The Legislative Void: Representative Actions In Transatlantic Context, Suzanne E. Chiodo

All Papers

The Canadian class action regimes have had a strong influence on the development of collective redress procedures in England. Canadian class proceedings legislation provided a model for the competition law class action regime in the UK, and before then, it featured prominently in the Civil Justice Council’s report that recommended the enactment of generic class actions legislation in England. It is fitting, then, that the UK Supreme Court’s recent decision in Lloyd v Google referred to the Canadian jurisprudence on the representative rule, which allows one or more claimants to represent a group with the ‘same interest’. While Lloyd did …

Tawdry Or Honourable? Additional Payments To Representative Plaintiffs In Ontario And Beyond, Suzanne E. Chiodo

All Papers

Additional payments to representative plaintiffs upon the resolution of a class action are widespread in Ontario and elsewhere. However, this subject has received very little attention from appellate courts (at least in Canada), law reformers, and academics. Two conflicting judgments from the Ontario Superior Court have put a spotlight on this practice, however, and it will soon be receiving appellate treatment. The practice has also recently been subject to conflicting appellate decisions in the US. This brings to the fore crucial questions not only about the purpose of such payments, but also about the purposes of class actions in general. …

You Have To Find Them First And That’S A People-Centered Process: Learning About People-Centered Justice Through The Rural Mobile Law Van, Ab Currie

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

This paper is an assessment of the Mobile Rural Law Van project at the mid-point of a three-year project, turning the lens of people-centricity on the project. The observations on people-centricity do not represent the results of structured research in which people centricity is defined, indicators developed and measured. Rather, it is part of the accumulating lessons learned as the project matures over time.

Safety In Numbers Or Lost In The Crowd? Litigation Of Mass Claims And Access To Justice In Ontario, Suzanne E. Chiodo

Articles & Book Chapters

Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act is 30 years old. In the past three decades, it has inspired similar legislation across Canada and around the world, and its capacity for bringing about social change has been widely acknowledged. But, like all things that mature, some cracks are beginning to show. The certification test under section 5 of the CPA has been made more restrictive by recent legislative amendments. In addition, class action practitioners are starting to recognize that the CPA can be a blunt instrument and that some mass claims are better litigated outside of that context. While smaller claims may find …

Becoming Competitive On The Worldwide Stage: U.K. Supreme Court Gives Green Light To Class Actions, Suzanne E. Chiodo

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

English Court Of Appeal Looks To Canada In Opening Gates To Competition Law Class Actions, Suzanne E. Chiodo

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Not Waiving, But Drowning: Supreme Court Of Canada Kills Waiver Of Tort As An Independent Cause Of Action, Suzanne E. Chiodo

Articles & Book Chapters

After decades of uncertainty in the area of class actions and tort law, waiver of tort is dead. In its decision in Atlantic Lottery Corp. v. Babstock,1 released on July 24, 2020, the Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") killed off the concept once and for all, holding that, "[t]his novel cause of action does not exist in Canadian law and has no reasonable chance of succeeding at trial. In addition, the term waiver of tort' is apt to generate confusion and should be abandoned."2 While the plaintiffs' claims in this case also included breach of contract and unjust enrichment, the …

Public Law In Canada, Richard Haigh

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

How Ontarians Experience The Law: An Examination On Incidence Rate, Seriousness And Response To Legal Problems, Matthew Dylag

LLM Theses

Access to civil justice is a conceptual framework that, at its most basic, claims all people are entitled to have their legal disputes resolved fairly. However, it is currently understood that these ideals are not reflected in the day-to-day realities of ordinary people. Though scholarship has examined ways in which to better allow for meaningful access to civil justice, there is still a need for further quantitative research especially from the Canadian perspective. This paper provides an empirical foundation to this discussion by examining the 2014 Cost of Justice project survey. Specifically, it examines the incidence rate of civil legal …

Canadian Civil Justice: Relief In Small And Simple Matters In An Age Of Efficiency, Jonathan Silver, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

Canada is in the midst of an access to justice crisis. The rising costs and complexity of legal services in Canada have surpassed the need for these services. This article briefly explores some obstacles to civil justice as well as some of the court-based programmes and initiatives in place across Canada to address this growing access to justice gap. In particular, this article explains the Canadian civil justice system and canvasses the procedures and programmes in place to make the justice system more efficient and improve access to justice in small and simple matters. Although this article does look briefly …

The Justice In Unjust Enrichment, Dan Priel

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The question of what justice has to do with the law of unjust enrichment (if it has anything to do with it at all) has in recent years come to occupy scholars who have sought to explain the theoretical foundations of this area of law and its relationship with other branches of private law. A popular answer has been that the law of unjust enrichment, like the rest of private law, instantiates the politically neutral norms of corrective justice. In this article, I argue that this is not the case in two distinct senses. First, even on its own, corrective …

Constitutional Accommodation And The Rule(S) Of Courts, Lorne Sossin

Articles & Book Chapters

Constitutional authority for the development and implementation of the rules of court lies with both the legislature, by its statutory power, and the judiciary, by the constitutional principles of judicial independence. The court rules in question here are those that govern court accessibility as well as the roles and responsibilities of parties in civil litigation. The three existing models of rule-making are court-led, where a majority of government officials, and collaborative, which lacks an evident majority of either. These rule-making bodies do not control court fees, the executive does, but in a system with any model, the judiciary always has …

Appellate Court Reform In Ontario: A Consultation Paper, John D. Mccamus, D. F. Bur

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

No abstract provided.

Compelling Disclosure By A Non-Party Litigant In Violation Of Foreign Bank Secrecy Laws: Recent Developments In Canada-United States Relations, Jean-Gabriel Castel

Articles & Book Chapters

The question whether Canadian or American courts should enforce their laws in a manner that respects the laws of friendly sovereign states has recently been examined by the Supreme Court of Canada and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Their decisions will be the object of this note in the light of recent developments in Canada-United States relations in the area of legal assistance in civil and criminal matters.

Often our courts are asked to compel a person not a party to the litigation or investigation to produce documents or give evidence in Canada when to …

The Report Of The Osgoode Hall Study On Compensation For Victims Of Automobile Accidents, Allen M. Linden

Books

The Osgoode Hall Study was aimed at filling the factual lacuna which prevented an informed assessment of the Ontario system of compensating automobile accident victims. Those in charge of the study set out to collect and analyze statistical data which would illuminate the strength and weaknesses of the present system of loss distribution. A survey was designed which would discover the financial costs incurred by injured individuals and whether they were uncompensated, undercompensated or overcompensated for these costs. The project further aimed at describing the interrelation of the tort, private loss insurance and government reparation schemes, the role of lawyers …