Nearly 15 months after the Quebec Court of Appeal griped about the legal war of attrition that has lasted more than a decade in the case against a former accounting giant and its partners over the infamous collapse of Montreal real-estate firm Castor Holdings Inc., the highest court of the province recently dismissed yet another appeal.
Quebec
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Bulldozer who headed crime probe passes away
Jean-Luc Dutil, a former Quebec Court judge and the head an extensive probe into organized crime that marked Quebec during the 1970s, passed away, ravaged by a cancer in the space of less than two months.
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Federal government overstepped its authority, says Quebec Court of Appeal
In a ruling hailed as a victory for federalism, the Quebec Court of Appeal struck down dozens of provisions of the federal Assisted Human Reproduction Act it deemed to be unconstitutional because it encroached on provincial jurisdictions.
“If we want to demonstrate that federalism is capable of working, then it must be capable of respecting the jurisdiction of provinces – this was a wise ruling,” remarked Jocelyne Provost, the Quebec Crown prosecutor who successfully argued the case before the appellate court.
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High court refuses to hear Moroccan immigration case
The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the case of two Moroccans who accused the Quebec government of discrimination in its handling of immigration applications from the North African country. As is usually the case, the high court did not give reasons for its decision.
Khadija Goumbarak and Mohamed Tayouri filed applications for a Québec selection certificate in the class subject to the list of occupations in demand. Between the time they filed their applications and the time those applications were considered, the list was amended, and the occupations for which they were allegedly qualified were withdrawn from the list.
Their applications were rejected because they also could not meet the requirements in the “employability and occupational mobility” class. Goumbarak and Tayouri filed a motion for declaratory judgment to quash the decision of the Quebec Minister of Relations with Citizens and Immigration on the grounds that they had, inter alia, acquired rights at the time they filed their applications and were the victims of discrimination on the basis of their Moroccan citizenship.
The Superior Court dismissed the motion. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.
I’ve written about the Quebec court of appeal ruling, and you can read it here.
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Quebec Court of Appeal shuns strict approach towards sex offender registration
Trial judges considering a Crown’s request to apply an order that requires an offender to comply with the Sex Offender Information Registration Act (“SOIRA”) should consider on a case-by-case basis the impact registration would have on the offender while weighing public interest to determine gross disproportionality, the Quebec Court of Appeal found in a ruling that steers away from a more rigid interpretation of reporting obligations.
In a 32-page ruling, dealing with four concurrent cases that challenged the constitutionality of s.490 of the Criminal Code, the court held that a stiff interpretation of what constitutes public interest would be unfair as it would be almost impossible for a convicted sex offender to establish that, if the order were made, the impact on them (including their privacy or liberty) would be grossly disproportionate to the public interest in protecting society.
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Minigolf is a sport, rules tribunal
Mini-putt, or minigolf as it also known, has joined the ranks of bowling and billiard, and is now officially considered to be a sport in Quebec.
In an 11-page ruling, the Administrative Tribunal of Quebec overturned a judgment made by a government agency who refused to give a Montreal entrepreneur a liquor licence under the pretext he was not operating a “sports centre.”
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Cuckold loses bid to strike his name off child’s birth certificate
A man who discovered that he was not the biological father of a child lost his bid before the Quebec Court of Appeal to strike his name off the child’s certificate and invalidate his bond of filation with the child.
The Rimouski businessman, who had a seven-year common-law relationship that lasted between December 1998 and June 2005, discovered from acquaintances, shortly after being separated, that it was unlikely he was the father of the child born in 2002. On January 2007, a DNA test concluded that, with a probability greater than 99.99 per cent, that he was not the biological father of the child.
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A Quebec judge reflecting on challenges they face
At times, judges publicly muse over the challenges they face. In a discourse given a few years ago, Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Allan Hilton reflected on judges and lawyers grappling with the challenges emanating from Quebec’s unique cultural and linguistic make-up.
Here are some excerpts:
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Blogger condemned to pay $125,000 for defamation
An exiled Senegalese journalist, now residing in Montreal, has been ordered to pay the son of the president of the Republic of Senegal $125,000 for defaming him in a blog widely republished by African media outlets.
In a blog run by the well-respected French-based publication Nouvel Observateur, Souleymane Jules Diop portrayed Karim Meïssa Wade, in a series of postings that were published between July and November 2005, as a criminal who appropriated or diverted public funds, was involved in money-laundering, and resorted to threats and physical intimidation.
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Immigration Act cannot be invoked to fight extradition
A Hungarian couple of Roma origin lost their bid to overturn an extradition order issued by the Federal Minister of Justice after the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act cannot be invoked to contest an extradition order. (more…)
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Native leader condemned to pay $106,000 to his former lawyer
Guillaume Carle, a controversial native leader, was ordered to pay $106,295 to Jean-Carol Boucher, a Gatineau lawyer who represented Carle in his long and bitter fight against the Native Alliance of Quebec (NAQ).
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Pirate banned from movie theatres
A 25-year old Montrealer cannot enter a movie theatre nor own any recording device for the next two years after being convicted of illegally copying the film Dan In Real Life with a camcorder in a cinema.
Louis René Haché, the first Canadian to be charged under Canada’s tougher piracy laws and the second to be convicted, was caught red-handed on a late Friday night 18 months ago, comfortably ensconced in his chair, his girlfriend by his side, with a digital camcorder atop a tripod recording Steve Carell’s comedy.
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Sudoku will is valid, rules court
During the Christmas holidays Fernande Aubé, while suffering from the ravages of cancer, kept herself busy playing Sudoku as she lay in a hospital bed in Hull, Quebec. The former teacher also lined several of the pages of the puzzle book with her last will and testament, with instructions that had changed the notarized will she had signed in 1991.
“Please accept my apologies with all the paperwork I have left you,” wrote Aubé, who gave the document to a nurse with instructions to pass it on to Aubé’s daughter Gina before she passed away on Christmas Eve in 2007. “I have been thinking of doing it for months but destiny was quicker than me.”
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Security company held responsible for employee’s tort
The world’s fifth-largest purveyor of armored car and security guard services was ordered to pay $782,000 to an insurance company after Quebec Superior Court held that it was liable for tort committed by one of its employees who set fire to a vacant YMCA building in downtown Montreal.
“The suit essentially rests on the delicate and controversial question surrounding the liability of the principal for the intentional fault of its employee,” noted Justice Chantal Masse in Axa Assurances inc. c. Groupe de sécurité Garda inc. (more…)
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DNA testing approved by appeal court
The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that a police officer who obtained surgical dressing from an unconscious patient in a hospital in order to conduct a DNA test did not infringe the Criminal Code and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (more…)