plus ça change, etc

I suppose one good consequence, effective May 1, 2021, of British Columbia abolishing most of the right to sue for personal injuries sustained in motor vehicle accidents, in British Columbia, and going to a no-fault system, is that, eventually, its trial judges and personal injury lawyers will have fewer opportunities to display one or both of (a) their apparent lack of knowledge of the applicable law or (b) their apparent belief that the Supreme Court of Canada judgments don’t apply to British Columbia.

For example, there will be few opportunties for trial judges and trial lawyers to claim that this is BC law on proof of factual causation in tort: “The ‘but for’ test recognizes that compensation for negligent conduct should only be made where a substantial connection between the injury and the defendant’s conduct is present: Resurfice Corp. v. Hanke, 2007 SCC 7 at paras. 21-23.” 

It’s very possible that mistakes like this would decrease if trial judges would stop plagiarizing … I mean copying from portions of plaintiff counsels’ written submissions which were last updated sometime before 2010 and were wrong, then.

It’s worth wondering why the trial judges and lawyers who keep making this type of mistake can or won’t plagiarize … I mean cut and paste from something more current.