No personal environmental conviction without knowledge or participation
When is an individual liable to conviction for a corporate environmental offence? The Ontario Ministry of the Environment has insisted that management personnel are automatically liable for corporate environmental offences, and has laid numerous charges on this basis. The Summary Conviction Appeal Court disagrees. For personal liability, individual defendants must either participate in committing the...
Continue reading the post titled No personal environmental conviction without knowledge or participationCourt Grants Leave to Appeal on Umbrella Purchaser Issue
Fanshawe College of Applied Arts and Technology v Hitachi, Ltd., 2017 ONSC 2791 In Fanshawe v Hitachi, the plaintiff alleges that the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to fix the prices for CRT (an older technology used in televisions and computer monitors). The plaintiff alleges breach of the Competition Act, RSC 1985, c C-34 (the “Competition...
Continue reading the post titled Court Grants Leave to Appeal on Umbrella Purchaser IssueDo Employers Have Human Rights Obligations to Former Employees?
Two sisters from Inuvik Native Bands were employed by White Tornado Cleaning Services, owned by Rhonda Sallows. Their employment ended when they both quit, in response to allegedly being yelled at repeatedly by Ms. Sallows. Ms. Sallows subsequently told the sisters that she was decreasing their pay rate to minimum wage for their last day...
Continue reading the post titled Do Employers Have Human Rights Obligations to Former Employees?What Does it Take to be a Representative Plaintiff in a Class Proceeding?
In most class actions, class counsel represent class members in Court. One class member, the “representative plaintiff,” has important responsibilities with special duties to absent class members. Ontario’s class proceeding legislation requires that each class action have a representative plaintiff who: (i) would fairly and adequately represent the interests of the class; (ii) has produced...
Continue reading the post titled What Does it Take to be a Representative Plaintiff in a Class Proceeding?More on killing birds with buildings as an environmental offence
Ecojustice has settled its bird-killing prosecution against the Menkes Developments (Consilium Place) office complex. As described in a previous post, Ecojustice (as counsel for Ontario Nature) charged Menkes with environmental offences. They proved that these buildings were unusually dangerous to birds, killing or injuring 900 birds during 2008 and 2009 as a result of collisions with their reflective glass. At trial,...
Continue reading the post titled More on killing birds with buildings as an environmental offenceRuling: Wind turbine approvals comply with the Charter
While some people find wind turbines annoying, subjective annoyance is not so serious an infringement of personal security to constitute a breach of the Charter.
Continue reading the post titled Ruling: Wind turbine approvals comply with the CharterAnother small step for environmental research at the Experimental Lakes Area
The long, painful process of rescuing the irreplaceable Experimental Lakes Area of fresh water environmental research has taken another small but essential step. The Ministry of the Environment has made the decision to proceed with proposed regulations under the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) and Ontario Water Resources Act (OWRA) to create a mechanism to authorize experiments...
Continue reading the post titled Another small step for environmental research at the Experimental Lakes AreaCourt of Appeal stays Ostrander wind approval pending appeal to protect turtles
The Ontario Court of Appeal has stayed the Ostrander Point wind approval pending an appeal by the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists.
Continue reading the post titled Court of Appeal stays Ostrander wind approval pending appeal to protect turtlesAnti-fracking bylaws: US Lawyer wins green Nobel prize
Helen Slottje, a lawyer in Ithaca, New York, was recently awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work “helping towns across New York defend themselves from oil and gas companies by passing local bans on fracking” (the US equivalent of anti-fracking bylaws). Her legal research concluded that individual townships could use zoning laws, through “home rule”, to...
Continue reading the post titled Anti-fracking bylaws: US Lawyer wins green Nobel prizeVermont adopts first US GMO food labelling law
Food produced from genetic engineering should be labeled as such
Continue reading the post titled Vermont adopts first US GMO food labelling lawReceive Blog Posts
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