April 23, 2013
Image via returntomanhood.org
Via the Toronto Star:
A Toronto criminal lawyer’s Twitter account has sparked outrage online after several offensive tweets were posted in the wake of the Boston bombing.
The tweets were sent last week from Twitter account @Dasilvalaw, which has since been deleted, though several retweets can still be found online.
“I pray for the suspects. May they slay the police army of satan. Death to all police!” reads one posting sent from @Dasilvalaw. Other tweets from that account contained vitriolic responses to offended Twitter users, including “am praying that u get violently raped. May cancer be upon u.!!!”
The lawyer, David Da Silva, 34, said in an emailed response sent Monday to the Star that he is “not the author of any such tweets.”
Asked in a follow-up email if his account had been hacked, the defence lawyer said he is “having this matter investigated at this time.”
Lawyer Nadia Liva, who sent an email to the Star saying she is acting as his counsel, said he is “very concerned” and “we are currently investigating the tweets, which were not authored by Mr. Da Silva.”
I don’t know Da Silva, either personally or professionally, but his website bio is generic: Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Law Society of Upper Canada, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Toronto Police Association, Toronto Star, Twitter
Posted in Law Society of Upper Canada, lawyer, lawyers, Legal Ethics, legal marketing, professional, professionalism, Rules of Professional Conduct, social media, Twitter | 17 Comments »
April 18, 2013
Kent E. Thomson and Nicholas Van Exan (Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP) have posted a working paper entitled: “Unpacking Pandora’s Box: Consumer Arbitration Law after Seidel”. The abstract reads:
Until a few years ago, scholars and practitioners shared in the view that Canada was an “arbitration-friendly” jurisdiction. Canadian courts, and in particular the Supreme Court of Canada, earned this reputation through a series of important decisions in which arbitration clauses were enforced in the consumer protection law context. These decisions reflected an emerging consensus among jurists that arbitration was a system of equal importance and legitimacy to the judicial system policed by the courts. Or so it appeared.
In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Seidel v. Telus Communications Inc., in which a narrow majority of the Court held that an arbitration clause contained in a standard consumer contract was void in respect of certain provisions of the British Columbia Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act. Superficially, Seidel signaled a small but innocuous change to the Supreme Court’s approach to adjudicating statutory rights. The implications of the Court’s decision, however, are potentially far-reaching. In Seidel, the Supreme Court re-ignited a longstanding debate over the legitimacy of arbitration as a means of resolving consumer-related disputes.
This paper explores the law of consumer arbitration both before and after the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decision in Seidel. The authors find that Seidel re-opened what appeared in Canada to be a firmly closed Pandora’s Box. Whereas before Seidel courts would not interfere with arbitration agreements absent clear and express legislative language to the contrary, today no such certainty prevails. Contrary to the direction recently taken by U.S. courts, Seidel permits Canadian courts to rule against the arbitration of consumer claims on the basis of implied legislative intent and even at the expense of the arbitrator’s jurisdiction. The resulting uncertainty created by this approach means that counsel should, now more than ever, draft arbitration agreements with a view to their eventual litigation.
Download a pdf copy of the paper via SSRN here.
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Tags: Arbitration clause, Canada, Class action, Consumer Protection, Court, Law, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of Canada
Posted in arbitrability, arbitration, Arbitration Act, arbitration clause, class action, class actions, consumer protection, Consumer Protection Act, Seidel v. Telus Communications Inc., Supreme Court of Canada | Leave a Comment »
April 17, 2013
The U.S. Supreme Court today released a significant decision on personal jurisdiction in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (No. 10–1491, slip opinion: link). (backgrounder here and here).
The Court unanimously denied the appeal. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Alien Tort Statute, Congress, Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court of the United States, United States
Posted in Federal, federal courts, federal law, forum non conveniens, forum of necessity, in personam jurisdiction, international human rights, international law, international litigation, jurisdiction, jus cogens, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, SCOTUS, United States, United States Supreme Court | 3 Comments »
April 17, 2013
Mark Donald (Student At Law -Thornton Grout Finnigan LLP) has published “This means war? Baglow v. Smith and online defamation in the blogosphere”.
The article comments on the fascinating Baglow v. Smith case and its implications for defamation law in relation to political blogs and online media. It appears to be the only legal paper in existence that references Bob Marley, Thomas Hobbes, Kim Jong-un and the movie “The Untouchables”.
The link to the paper is here.
A link to an introductory summary piece intended for non-lawyers can be found here.
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Posted in blog, Online Defamation, cyberlaw, cyberlibel, blawgs, defamation, social media, Defamation Law, blawging, Blawgosphere, online, Baglow v. Smith | 1 Comment »
April 16, 2013
Alexander Tsesis (Loyola University Chicago School of Law) has posted ”Inflammatory Speech: Offense versus Incitement”, Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 97, 2013/Loyola University Chicago School of Law Research Paper No. 2013-006. Here’s the abstract:
The commonly accepted notion that content regulations on speech violate the First Amendment is misleading. In three recent cases – Snyder v. Phelps, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, and United States v. Stevens – the Court made clear that free speech includes the right to express scurrilous, disgusting, and disagreeable ideas. A different set of cases, however, concluded that group defamation, intentional threats, and material support for terrorist organizations are not protected forms of expression. This Article seeks to make sense of this doctrinal dichotomy and to develop clearer guidelines for regulating incitements that are posted on the Internet and in public areas.
Many leading First Amendment scholars regard the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on outrageous and inciting expressions to be inconsistent. These academic authors often adopt a libertarian theory of the Free Speech Clause. They generally agree with cases that strike limits on offensive statements but disregard, or outright ignore, those that uphold restrictions on threats and defamations made in the absence of any imminent threat of harm. This Article demonstrates that opponents of incitement regulations fail to differentiate policies that protect public safety from those that silence outrageous but benign expressions.
I propose a relatively straightforward method for evaluating the constitutionality of incitement laws. The mens rea of a speaker is key to judicial determinations about whether true threats, group defamation, and material support for terrorists are actionable or constitutionally protected. This Article parses the Court’s analysis of unprotected incitement that poses a threat to public safety. A small but significant group of decisions belies the libertarian claim that incitement is constitutionally protected. My proposal will undoubtedly be controversial because the method I propose would augment juries’ and judges’ authority to assess the context within which threatening statements are made and qualify the relevance of the canonic imminent threat of harm doctrine.
Download a pdf copy of the article via SSRN here.
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Tags: First Amendment, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Freedom of the press, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Minnesota Law Review, Snyder v. Phelps, United States
Posted in Constitution, Constitutional Rights, First Amendment, free speech, Freedom of expression, freedom of speech, Group Defamation, hate speech, IIED, Imminent Threat of Harm, Incitement, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Material Support for Terrorism, Outrageous Speech, Protected Speech, Regulation of Speech | Leave a Comment »
Antonin I. Pribetic
