Law Times

July 28, 2008

The premier weekly newspaper for the legal profession in Ontario

Issue link: https://digital.lawtimesnews.com/i/50564

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 0 of 15

A.NEUMAN ASSOCIATES INC. McKELLAR STRUCTURED SETTLEMENTS INC. www.mckellar.com 1-800-265-8381 www.mckellar.com Call 416.223.5991 www.IFAccountant.com Investigative & Forensic Accounting Specialists Proven Expertise ntitled-6 1 Inside This Issue 3 Women In Law 6 Advising A Client 9 Focus On Internet/ E-Commerce Law Quote of the week "We worked on the deal for a few months. It was generally a great transaction to be involved in. There were a lot of interesting issues, and it was generally a good working group, and we got the deal done." Toronto Lawyer attacks committee findings of the Canadian Judicial Council last week gave him at least a glimmer of hope that his career isn't over. Matlow, 68, appeared before 21 members Matlow asks to stay on bench T BY ROBERT TODD Law Times oronto Superior Court Justice Ted Matlow is one step closer to being removed from the bench, but members of the council — all chief justices or associate chief justices of Canada's superior courts — to make a final plea as to why his conduct in opposing a development in his community shouldn't lead to his dismissal. Matlow stood before the judges, many of whom apparently put vacations on hold to appear at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel at Pear- son International Airport for the hearing, and delivered an impassioned speech. "This is one of the saddest and most fright- ening days of my life," said Matlow, who went on to apologize for any embarrassment he's caused to the bench. The supernumerary judge, who has been prohibited from hearing cases since April 2007, said his vocation has been the centre of his life. He said he's committed evenings and weekends to the job, even when he became a supernumerary under the presumption of a less-intense workload. Matlow said the months in which he has been barred from hearing cases "are among the most difficult of my life." In terms of his decision to deliver documents to a media outlet slamming the City of Toron- to's legal department the day before sitting on a case involving the city, Matlow said, "I believed 1/8/08 3:28:10 PM Photo: Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Toronto Star I was acting as a good judge and a good citizen." He added that he made a personal judgment and found the issues on the case on which he was sitting were "completely different" from the issues surrounding the development near his home. Therefore, he said he found no reason to recuse himself from the case. While Matlow previously apologized for his actions in delivering the documents, he went further last week, saying he's sorry "without reser- vation" for any other errors he might have made. "I wish I had acted differently," he said. Matlow assured the judges that, if given Unclear Supreme Court upholds solicitor-client privilege BY TIM NAUMETZ For Law Times OTTAWA — A landmark Supreme Court of Canada ruling has taken adjudication over claims of solicitor- client privilege a major step closer to the point where only courts will have jurisdiction to decide whether ruling constitutionally independent courts are the "presumptive guard- ians" of privilege, says Bruce MacIn- tosh, who argued for the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. "The court has made loud and clear that privilege as a substantive legal right is unique," MacIntosh adds, in an interview with Law the appeal from a Federal Court of Appeal decision that set aside a Federal Court trial decision over a privilege claim in Alberta. In 2002, Annette Soup was dismissed from her employment with the Blood Tribe Department of Health in Standoff, Alta., and sought access to her personnel file [If] Parliament intended to prevent the commissioner from verifying claims of privilege, it could have specifically excluded this power as it has done under several other acts. the claims are valid, says one of 17 lawyers who acted for a host of in- terveners in the case. The decision in Privacy Com- missioner of Canada v. Blood Tribe Department of Health marked the first time the court substantively addressed the "gatekeeper issue" by Times. "It has now said that privi- lege as a substantive legal right is unique and is not to be balanced against other competing societal or statutory objectives." The decision was written by Jus- tice Ian Binnie, with concurrence from all six other justices who heard because she suspected the employer improperly collected inaccurate information about her and used it to discredit her before the depart- ment's board of directors. The department initially denied Soup's request for access to the in- formation it held about her, and subsequently partially complied at the request of the federal privacy commissioner after Soup lodged a complaint with the commissioner. Other information the depart- ment withheld — a "bundle of letters" from its solicitors — be- came the basis for four years of court action that ended with the Supreme Court decision rendered on July 17. The first Federal Court ruling, by Justice Richard Mosley, backed the privacy commissioner's bid to view the privileged documents, noting the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Docu- ments Act gives the commissioner the power to exercise wide investi- gatory powers "in the same man- ner and to the same extent as a superior court of record." Next www.lawtimesnews.com

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Law Times - July 28, 2008