A grainy video showing eight year old Tori Stafford being led away by one of her killers served as a tragic image in the trial of Tracy-Lynne McClintic and Michael Rafferty. McClintic pled guilty to first degree murder. Rafferty went to trial before a jury and was convicted of first degree murder. The high profile […]

The Dubin Lecture on Advocacy, named in honour of former Chief Justice of Ontario and legendary litigator Charles Dubin, is a series on advocacy started in 1998. Lectures are delivered every two years and have included luminaries of the legal profession from across the globe. Some of them have been very funny. The first speaker,

There has been so much of value written on the subject of oral advocacy that it would be impossible to review these efforts in a short paper. For the purpose of discussing oral advocacy in motions court, there are several approaches that warrant emphasis: (1) put yourself in the position of the audience; (2) the

The decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario in Zacharias v. Zurich Insurance Company, 2013 ONCA 482, is of interest in a number of respects. From the perspective of appellate practice, the case is noteworthy in that the grounds for the Court’s decision were based on an argument that had not been made before

The subject of access to justice has been receiving much attention of late. It was top of mind at the annual conference of the Canadian Bar Association. Consultation reports on the topic are forthcoming. I would like to focus, however, on a subject that has more practical implications for civil cases currently in our Court

Overview Much of value has been written on the subject of appellate advocacy. From our Court of Appeal, Justice Laskin has written three outstanding papers which, although not directly related to oral advocacy, have been of great benefit to practitioners: John I. Laskin “A View from the Other Side: what I would have done differently

There have been so many useful papers written on appellate advocacy that it’s a little daunting to say anything fresh. While I can’t offer any blindingly new insights, I would like to focus on a few aspects of advocacy that I think merit attention: the importance of context; getting straight to the point; and making

When the Rules of Civil Procedure came into effect in 1985, they heralded a new approach to the use of summary judgment. A procedure that had previously been available only to Plaintiffs and only in claims that were specially endorsed was now, under Rule 20, available to either party and the responding party was warned

Acting for an appellant can feel like climbing Mount Everest. Leading judgments from the Supreme Court of Canada make overturning a trial judgment seem insurmountable. InHousen v. Nikolaisen, [2002] 2 S.C.R. 235 (S.C.C.) the Court held that a trial judge’s findings of fact cannot be overturned in the absence of a palpable and overriding error.