The Maple Leaf Brass Band
Christmas Concert
Sunday, Dec. 4, 2PM
Orleans United Church
Map
It will be fantastic!
p.s. If you'd ever like to come and listen to us rehearse, let me know and I'll get you in.
My major paper is driving me crazy, so I'm taking a break from it to share some legal illustrations with you.
Family Law: LeBlanc v LeBlanc [1988] 1 S.C.R. 217
The case where the wife has seven children in the first eight years of marriage, then gets a job working 3pm to 3am at a restaurant, eventually takes out a loan and buys the restaurant. Meanwhile he drinks a lot and occasionally runs errands.
"where the property has been acquired exclusively or almost wholly through the efforts of one spouse and there has been no, or a negligible contribution to child care, household management or financial provision by the other, then, in my view, there are circumstances relating to the acquisition, maintenance and improvement of property that entitle a court to exercise its discretion under s. 7(f). "
Children and Employment: As you know, in Ontario, children under 14 may not be employees anywhere. { Occupational Health and Safety Act - R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 851 (Industrial Establishments Regulation) s. 4(1)(e)}
Of course they can be "contractors", so they can work on movies under ACTRA contracts. Or they can deliver newspapers, pick berries, etc. under contract. No one would take advantage of a child worker, so it's all right that they're not protected by the Employment Standards Act. Well, if they are abused, there's the Child and Family Services Act.
I wonder if the kids who pick berries and deliver newspapers have to go through all the paperwork I've had to go through over the years so that the government treats my consulting work as a contractor relationship and not as an employer-employee relationship?
United Artists Corp v Pink Panther Beauty Corp[1998] 3 F.C. 534 (F.C.A.)
This was the trademark case in first-year property law that started me adding illustrations to my summaries. "Hey," I thought, "I'll be able to find this case quickly on the page if I put a picture of the Pink Panther there." So I did. And the next thing I was google image searching for all the cases in my summaries. But I've always felt concerned that United Artists would come after me for violating their copyright. I was using the picture for personal study, so it seemed like fair use to me, but still...
So now, here's a picture of a different panther who happens to be pink. If you have a copy of my property summary, please exchange this image for the one that is in there. Thank you.
Where a mark may refer to many things or, as noted earlier, is only descriptive of the wares or of their geographic origin, less protection will be afforded the mark. Conversely, where the mark is a unique or invented name, such that it could refer to only one thing, it will be extended a greater scope of protection.
Yes, usually you've got it right and I've got it wrong, but not all the time!
Hypomania: Abnormality of mood but even normal euphoria and mania. Characterized by optimism, pressure of speech and activity, and decreased need for sleep. Some people have increased creativity while others demonstrate poor judgment and irritability.
If you have speakers on your computer, click on this link or on the picture.
If you don't hear anything, it might be that somebody in Cornwall decided emergency service isn't funny.
[Thanks to Phil G for this excellent find. Why you were web surfing the Cornwall Police is none of our business.]
Some of my classmates in Law and Feminism have mentioned that they get really tired of having to explain feminism to men they know. (I think in 2005, they have a point.)
Denelle got particularly frustrated with one guy she knows the other night and yelled at him. It's my favourite quote from the class and she said it's okay for me to put it up here.
Some starter Links (suggestions welcome):
Just kidding, Mom.
The bike stays home and I'll be walking today.
I took this photo last week. It reminds me of the famous Tiananmen square picture of the man in front of the tanks. I'm afraid the man in my picture was also unsuccessful at stopping the onslaught.
Before last biz org class, David L noticed that my clementines and coffee cup looked like a Buddhist offering. He gave them a bit of a rearrangement. I assume it was to adjust their harmony. I took out my camera.
"Why are you taking a picture of that?" he asked.
"I've got a blog," I said. "It is constantly demanding content. Like a hungry monster."
p.s. a big hi to Ms Smith who was very close to being in the "I'm not the only nerd" collection, but I thought referring to things that happened in torts class two years ago might be statute barred now.
For almost any topic you can find someone with an interesting angle. I interviewed a lawyer friend who does personal injury claims on contingency for a paper on professional responsibility and contingency fees. He gave me great quotes. Things I wouldn't have said so clearly and more credible from a lawyer with ten years experience. Best example:
"Suppose," I asked, "that you had a client come in with an injury that you knew you could prove liability and damages for costs of ten thousand dollars, and the damages are going to amount to half a million dollars. What stops you from charging a twenty per cent contingency fee?" He replied, "That's a good law school question because it's something that would never occur." I laughed and he went on to say, "we're subject to the forces of the marketplace. Someone with a scenario like that should be shopping around." I asked him if the personal injury litigation field in Ottawa truly is a competitive marketplace. "Sure," he said, "just look at the Yellow Pages and the size of the ads."He also gave me references I'd missed in my Quicklaw searches.
Some of the benefits:
The Major Paper Word Count hasn't gone up because all the energy so far today has gone into "Law and Feminism". Here's an excerpt:
Before I went to teach in Africa, I was told that I would have to work hard to not put myself in a social context where I only hung out with expatriates. And that because of the culture in Ghana and because I would have a certain amount of money, I'd find myself not choosing to live the way Ghanaians lived.
No, no, I said to myself, I will have Ghanaian friends, I will live the way Ghanaians live. I will ride in the back of the mammy lorries.
Mammy lorries were on the way out in the mid-80s, but were still a common passenger vehicle for one to three hour distances. They were mainly Bedford trucks with flatbeds, shipped to Africa from Europe. In Africa, a wooden cabin would be built on the back. For passengers, planks were placed across the cargo compartment. In a standard sized truck eight adults could squeeze across if none were obese. With six rows, the rear cab could hold 48 people and their possessions. The one and a half hour ride between my school and Accra could be excruciating. The lack of back support meant lower back and shoulder pain. The unpadded plank meant a sore bum. I never had a chicken ride on my shoulder, but I more than once had them sitting on my feet.
If you were in the back of a mammy lorry, the best arrangement possible was to be on the front plank, so you could lean against the panel behind the driver's compartment, and wedged in between some solidly built market women because they would add extra support.
If you were really lucky, you'd ride up front with the driver.
But how to be so lucky? One way was to be a pretty woman and flirt a bit with the driver. Not available to me unless I was travelling with my "wife" or "sister" (Her status would depend on how flirtatious she wanted to get with the driver, usually she'd be my "wife"). It might be that an appropriate "dash" or bribe would get you up there, but I never learned if that was acceptable nor how to pull it off if it was. Another way to be lucky and get the offer to sit up front was to be white.
It didn't happen all the time, but often enough, the driver's mate would call me out of the back, "Oboruni, come, come, sit here," and I'd be up front with the driver. I talked about this with other volunteers. We'd all arrived with the idea that we'd never take advantage of our privilege, but after a few trips in the back of a mammy lorry, we'd only turn down a ride up front if we were travelling with Ghanaian friends. Otherwise we'd be up there right away. And we'd feel a bit aggrieved if we weren't invited up front. "Where's that Ghanaian courtesy to strangers we hear so much about."
a Mom: I want to know where you find time for school work in between all the hours you spend on your blog.
a Son: I'm more or less on top of things.
[later in the same phone call]
a Mom: We're disappointed, you know.
a Son: {thinking, oh, no, did I forget something? The birthdays and the anniversary are in the summmer, what could it be?} You're disappointed? Why?
a Mom: You didn't put up that picture of the tuba player you drew at the Salvation Army Band concert. I can see why you thought the quiz night was more important, but I wanted to see that picture.
She has a point, I really should have given the Canadian Staff Band of the Salvation Army a decent review after they played here three weeks ago. They are an awesome musical group. Certainly the best brass band in Canada, and the rival of any other brass band in the world. I was getting goosebump action within the first eight bars of their opening piece.
Any kid: "Mom, there's a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, how come there's no children's day?"
Any mom: "Every day is children's day!"
This may be true, but in Canada, only November 20 is Child Day.
A couple days ago I mentioned that I should be writing about tribunal accountability. It's actually the topic of my major paper. It's not a bad topic for a guy like me. On the law side there are finicky issues of independence of the tribunal and what the standard should be for the particular tribunal I'm interested in.
Then there's all this stuff about data collection, statistics and reporting. Yes, the field of expertise that bought me the ScrimChateau.
One little problem I've had is that while I had found a good set of materials on tribunal reform from the early 90s, I wasn't finding anything recent. I'd go to my various search engines and type in "tribunal accountability", "tribunal independence", and "tribunal funding" and get nothing. Then I'd switch "tribunal" with "administrative court" and do the same thing over again. Nothing. Then again with "Commission". Perhaps you can see how discouraging this could get.
Then I thought I'd get a little background on why there's a perceived need for accountability mechanisms from the tribunals. So I typed in "Radwanski". And I now have four recent articles that say exactly the kinds of things that I need them to say.
Thank you, George. I may even find a way to put your name in the title, maybe: "Tribunal Accountability and Independence: Remembering Radwanski"
Links:
CBC News: Radwanski apology doesn't stop MPs finding him in contempt of Parliament
The Radwanski Affair: Excellent summary with timeline and "lessons learned"
More legal illustrations available to you under a noncommercial use with attribution Creative Commons licence. [And please don't be surprised if my posts start really sliding downhill in the next few weeks.]
Children Testifying
[Future corporate lawyers, you don't want to be here, you want to be at this page.]
This is for your notes about the new amendment to the Canada Evidence Act s. 16.1 that'll come into effect in 2006. [See Bill C-2] Making it a presumption that the testimony in court of children under 14 is valid evidence, mandating that they be required to promise to tell the truth, and forbidding asking them to swear an oath or make an affirmation and no questions like "do you know baby Jesus cries when you tell a lie?"
You'll also want something to illustrate that for the protection of the child, methods like videotaped testimony may be used (see the new s. 715.1 of the Canada Evidence Act.
And you can use just the red circle picture to illustrate that it is the practice in Ontario to not have children testify in custody hearings, but to have reports from social workers who have talked to the children instead.
I drew this picture for Re Labbe and McCullough, (1979) 23 O.R. (2d) 536 (PCFD). The case about the musician (he might not have been a guitar player) who got his girlfriend pregnant, then left her, but wound up having to pay spousal support on top of child support even though he'd only spent a total of 6 weeks living with her and never even moved his stuff out of his parents house. While he'd been on tour, he'd stayed in touch and they'd talked about getting married, and she did look after him when he broke his hand.
I should be writing about Tribunal Accountability somewhere else, so no fascinating observations or brilliant new inventions today. Only a couple of legal illustrations available to you under a noncommercial use with attribution Creative Commons licence.
Business Organizations
Future corporate lawyers, you'll also want to check this page.
Cook v. Deeks [1916] 1 A.C. 554 (P.C.) The case where the directors took a railway construction contract for themselves: Where a corporation is actively negotiating for an opportunity and has a reasonable prospect of getting it, the corporation has an interest in the opportunity and a fiduciary is prohibited from exploiting it in her personal capacity.]
Peso Silver Mines Ltd. v. Cropper (1965), 56 D.L.R. (2d) 117 Mr. Cropper takes mining claims after Peso turns them down: Fiduciary Duty breached if Director a) had access to the opportunity only because of position and, b) took advantage through some action in capacity as director. [Of course, this picture is good for any case where somebody buys a mine. Or you could photoshop the sign and put the name of a famous mine there, like the one in that big constructive trust case.]
I have just discovered that my blog is now the "I feel lucky" Google hit for Lee Air Farming. If you haven't been following along, Lee Air Farming is a legal case that established an important point in the Common Law, a corporation owner and director can also be an employee of the corporation and should be treated as an employee when acting in that capacity.
I drew a picture of a crashing airplane for my summary, and now every day, two or three people who I assume to be law students pop in for a visit. I assume they are hoping for some illumination of the turgid writing of the British law lords. (If you're Canadian, one thing you can take pride in is that our Supreme Court Justices, or their clerks, write far more clearly than the top judges, or clerks, in any other jurisdiction.)
This means that I have an opportunity to give a message to future corporate lawyers all over the world. Today someone popped in from Turkey.
I think I'll start with a link to an Amnesty International page called Business and Human Rights - Doing Right
If anyone has other good ideas, I'm receptive. (Good idea criteria: funny is good, respectful is good, heavy-handed is bad.)
Previous posts:
With the coming of the cold weather, I wear my hood under my helmet. When it hits -7 below Celsius, I'll be wearing a neck tube and a tuque under the hood. At -15C, I'll replace the tuque with a balaclava. Wearing a balaclava, a neck tube, a hood and a helmet, it gets a little hard to turn my head to see what traffic is coming up behind me. "I need a rear-view mirror," I've been thinking.
But at this time of year, it's not easy to get reasonably priced bicycle accessories. Then I remembered the convex mirrors I bought in my shopping spree at the Dollar Bank. Just need a way to securely attach the mirror to my handlebars. Something so it won't bounce all around.
Two days later, I had my brainwave. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
Directions:
Links:
I scored one of those nice metal thermos coffee cups on Quiz Night. To be strictly honest, one of my team mates scored it. She didn't want it because a) one of the judges gave it to her so she'd "relax" and leave them alone and she didn't like being patronized and b) she didn't want a cup that had the name of a firm that wasn't the firm she'll be working at. (Isn't it good to see that loyalty already?)
These reasons posed no problem for me. I won't be working for a firm, so who cares what my mugs say. But when I got home, I remembered that in my big purchase at the Dollar Bank last week, there was a package with wire brushes. About 60 seconds with the copper brush and the firm name was all but invisible.
So, law students, if you have a bunch of cups with inappropriate firm names on them, spend a dollar for some wire brushes, and give yourself a collection of no name mugs.
I like this new poster OC Transpo is using. I'm often a "say something" kind of person. I'm the guy who yells "back door, please" when a timid person wants to get off and the driver hasn't opened the door. Or I'll tell the driver his sign is showing the wrong route number.
Where I'm weak is on the listening side. Sometimes when somebody tells me something looks wrong, I blow them off. "Yeah, I know," or "It's not a big deal."
Early new year's resolution: From now on, "Thanks for telling me about that," followed by action to address whatever is wrong. (Feel free to remind me.)
Links:
You might know that Make:Blog linked to my Toxic Waste Dessert posting last week. A few other sites did as well (unhappymeal is my favourite of them.) My traffic counter went through the ceiling. Look at the graph. From between 5 and 33 visitors a day to 1,265 visitors in one day! I'm famous! I thought. But the excitement faded and by the weekend back to the old numbers.
Yesterday I was looking at the Statcounter information on what sites are linking to me. I noticed I had 18 hits from http://bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=xxxxxxx&site=xxxxxxx (The letter x is replacing digits.) Bloglines is a service that lets people consolidate their blog reading. One of its features is that it lets a person search for specific topics.
I clicked the little button that would let me learn more about these hits. They turned out to be coming from 4 different IP addresses with consecutive numbers. xxx.xxx.245.197, xxx.xxx.245.198, xxx.xxx.245.199, and xxx.xxx.245.200 (Again, the x replaces digits. You'll see why I'm replacing the digits soon.)
So I clicked the little magnifying glass next to the first IP address to see who the ISP is and which of my pages they're looking at.
ISP: Defence Research Establishment-ottawa
Page visited: David Scrimshaw's Blog: Tasty Dessert: Toxic Waste (4 times)
The other three IP addresses had the same profile. All from DRE-Ottawa, all looking at the Toxic Waste post.
There you have it. A top secret government agency is checking regularly on my jello-pudding-gummy-worm-chocolate-cookie-etc dessert. Do you suppose they're planning a party?
On Friday morning, Prof. Huston took the Children and the Law class to see Youth Sentencing at the court house. The clerk would read out the charge, the youth would plead guilty, the Crown Attorney would read out the facts of the case and the sentence he recommended. Then the defence counsels would mention any differences they had with the account of the facts and any differences they would suggest for the sentence followed by a response from the Crown Attorney. The young defendant would be told to stand up and then Justice Fraser would pronounce the sentence.
In one case, an 18-year-old had been 17 when she and two friends went on a shoplifting spree at a Walmart. When they were caught by security in the parking lot there was a scuffle with some swearing. It was hard to imagine the timid young woman who stood before the judge in a scuffle with swearing, but she pleaded guilty.
The Crown recommended a sentence that include one year of probation, 20 hours of community service and what appeared to be standard conditions:
Last Tuesday, Make: Blog featured a link to a set of simple instructions (that appear to be written by Chieh Cheng) to make a camera mount for a bicycle.
I've got to have one, I said to myself.
I bought the things I needed at Home Hardware Thursday afternoon (before going to the Buck or Two) and made one Thursday night.
The camera mount is the gizmo with the wingnuts (aka thumbscrews).
[Oh, notice the headlight? For some reason they designed it so that a cyclist will see the top of the light when it is on. I made a cowl with foil tape on the top to keep it from distracting me and wrecking my night vision. ]
Back to the camera mount, one of the best parts of the instructions is that they require going to a dollar store for a light from which you take the mounting clamp. (He went to a 99 cent store, but if you want me to be technical about it, we'd also have to go into currency conversions.) I didn't have to go to a dollar store for the clamp because I've got a bunch of them already kicking around. (I keep losing lights and not losing the clamps that go with them.)
Here's my first real bike cam shot. Gladstone Avenue, Friday morning.
On my way to Elgin Street Friday afternoon I took my first vigilante shot. This guy has stopped in a no-stopping zone, which is a bike lane, on a busy bridge. My bike lane! But, you ask, does that inexpensive Kodak of yours have the resolution to get the plate number?
Yes, it does.
My second vigilante shot is a car going through a very red light. For this one the plate was pretty blurry. You'd need one of those CSI guys to bring it out.
But I didn't put the camera mount on the bike to enforce the traffic code. I got it to make art.
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