Category: Causation
Sloppy proof-reading in reasons for judgment
doesn’t help to engender respect.
Or anything else useful.
Or alleviate confusion that shouldn’t exist.
Or … [insert appropriate term.]
When it results in a misstatement of law that’s so egregious that we have to assume the judge(s) responsible for it know better.
“Scraping The Surface”
Anyone looking for my circa 2008, web-only, extended meanderings on aspects of the causation question
“CAUSATION IN CANADA IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM: NOTHING IS NOW ENOUGH”
aka “SCRAPING THE SURFACE: THE CONSEQUENCES OF RESURFICE CORP. V HANKE, 2007 SCC 7”
(Resurfice status 2008 rev 16, July 1, 2008)
can now find it at either link: here or here.
It’s no longer available online elsewhere, to my knowledge. If you know otherwise, please tell me.
Bear in mind that parts of it have been made obsolete, for now, by subsequent case law.
The “robust and pragmatic” approach: Abracadabra or As Night Follows Day
You’ll have to follow the bouncing ball or, in this case, the quotations from the cases. The commentary follows the quotations.
If … (Ontario) – Presumption of regularity
If a trial judge
1. quotes a summary of the law, as set out by the SCC, that’s more than 5 years out of date and is no longer correct, according to the SCC – ignoring whether that summary is accurate in the first place – probably because he or she has taken it from a now “overtaken” appellate decision of the judge’s appellate court;
All you need is … the facts (usually)
even if the trial judge misstates the law. Or it’s not clear what the judge thought the law is.
That’s why appeals are, broadly, from the evidence, not the judge’s reasons.
The 4th Monkey Still in Abstenia 