top cases to the hazard underlying an incident.
n Canada (Attorney General) v. PHS Community Services Society
Canada's top court ruled in September that Vancouver's supervised injection site for drug addicts should be exempt from fed- eral drug laws. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme
Court of Canada dismissed the appeal in Canada (Attorney General) v. PHS Com- munity Services Society and ordered the minister of health to grant an immediate exemption to the safe injection facility. Insite, which has been in operation since 2003, offers a supervised environ- ment for drug users without the fear of prosecution. In 2008, the federal government
refused to extend Insite's exemption from criminal laws outlined in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The top court ruled that the minister of health's refusal to extend the exemption was in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
n Crookes v. Newton
Hyperlinks on web sites, in and of them- selves, aren't publications and therefore can't be defamatory, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in October. In the case of Crookes v. Newton, Jus-
tice Rosalie Abella stated: "Hyperlinks are, in essence, references, which are fun- damentally different from other acts of 'publication.'" She continued: "A hyperlink, by itself,
should never be seen as 'publication' of the content to which it refers. When a person follows a hyperlink to a secondary source that contains defamatory words, the actual creator or poster of the defama- tory words in the secondary material is the person who is publishing the libel. Only when a hyperlinker presents content from the hyperlinked material in a way that actually repeats the defamatory content, should that content be considered to be 'published' by the hyperlinker." The dissenters, Chief Justice Beverley
McLachlin and Justice Morris Fish, gen- erally agreed with Abella's ruling but dif- fered on the heart of the matter. "However, a hyperlink should constitute publication if, read contextually, the text that includes
ntitled-1 1 Exceptional expertise
Forensic Engineering Loss Mitigation /Remediation Engineering Risk Management
the hyperlink constitutes adoption or endorsement of the specific content it links to," they said. "A mere general reference to a web site is not enough to find publication." The case involved Wayne Crookes, the
president and sole shareholder of West Coast Title Search Ltd., who brought a series of lawsuits against those he claimed were responsible for a "smear campaign" against him and other members of the Green Party of Canada in articles published
on a number of web sites in 2006. Jon Newton has a B.C.-based web site
containing commentary about various issues, including free speech and the Inter- net. One of the articles he posted on it was called "Free Speech in Canada" and con- tained hyperlinks to other web sites that in turn had information about Crookes. At both the trial and appellate levels, the courts ruled the hyperlinks didn't constitute publication of the impugned content.
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2011 top news & newsmakers 9 11-11-16 2:35 PM
