Category: Scholarship
The BC Follies never end
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.
FooBarr Follies
14 April: Update: a few days latter, Foobarr admitted its error, restored the post, and rescinded the ‘suspension’. It never explained why or how it made the errror.
Imagine that.
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28 March: I’m about to break a personal rule and mention Facebook in some context other than legal.
Some of you might be interested in knowing that, apparently, Em Zee Be’elzeebubbles has some standards, after all.
He’s not just the Lord of The Lowly Housefly.
FooBarr has sinbinned me for reposting the meme shown at the bottom of this post on the basis that it violates FooBarr’s Community Standards. FooBarr didn’t tell me what the violation was so I presume it must be accuracy, honesty and truth.
Imagine that.

DC
Possible Name Change
1 Pandemic reality: Since I’m trapped, realistically, in C eh N eh D eh for the foreseeable future; that is, probably 1 year at least, I’m considering adding to the name of this blog.
“The World According To A Snark: A Currently Canadian Edition”
2 On the proper pronunciation of: Toronto (pronounced with two “t”s, the second following the one “n”); right Mr. Featherstonehaugh; Mr Worstershire; Mr Worster? Mr Smtythe? Mr Ghoti?
August 4, 2020; Nov 10, 2020
Hanlon’s Razor – Corollaries for Law – #2 – Jabberwocky
The amount and opaqueness of judicial and practitioner jabberwocky varies directly with the speaker’s inability to explain, adequately, why the desired result is the legally required and better result.
Hanlon’s Razor: Corollaries for law – #1 – Intellectual Dishonesty
An orthodox statement of Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
Legal corollary #1: Never attribute to incompetence that which is adequately explained by intellectual dishonesty.