Defence of Lethal Collision Case not Seeking Stay for Delay
On August 11, 2021, 78-year-old John Fox and 75-year-old Glenys Fox were killed in a collision when Christopher Boucha, now 52 years-old crossed the median line of the road with his five-tonne Penske truck. A crown witness, who was behind Boucha at the time of the accident, believed that Boucha veered off because he was either sleeping or texting. Boucha has been charged with eight …
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Langley Manslaughter Case Comes to Conclusion After Almost Two and a Half Years
On November 24, 2023, a man from Langley B.C. was finally convicted of manslaughter after his arrest almost two and a half years ago. Jacob Cook was 20 years old when he stabbed his 28-year-old brother Jesse to death on May 30, 2021. The two brothers were at home with their mother and step-father when the killing took place. Jesse had relapsed to his opioid …
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Stays of Proceedings Quadruple in Quebec Due to Court Delays
According to the Globe and Mail, the number of criminal cases stayed in Quebec has more than quadrupled this year due to court delays. There were 18 cases stayed in 2022 and 75 cases have been stayed in 2023 so far. Between March 1 and September 22 this year, Quebec ended an additional 196 criminal cases by nolle prosequi, a procedure where the prosecution declines …
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Alberta Amends Rules of Court Replacing Summary Trials with “Streamlined Trials”
On November 8, 2023, Alberta, one of the most delay-conscious provinces in Canada, amended the Rules of Court, replacing summary trials with the new “streamlined trial” process. This amendment will take effect on January 1, 2024. Summary trials were intended to be an efficient option for cases that were too complex or important for summary judgment but did not require a full standard trial. …
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The Anthropology of Justice
Why do we tolerate the intolerable? The annals of laws around the world and for all recorded history identify delay as not only a defect of justice but also record the satisfaction of receiving justice even when it arrives not only late but too late. There is something in human nature that makes us yearn for vindication at whatever cost of time, stress and distraction? …
Flock Estate v. Flock (Part 2)
The death of the principal that lies at the heart of estate litigation supports the view that party-driven litigation is particularly prone to delay, when as the Monty Python sketch observed: the Parrot is dead. The transmission of property between generations particularly seems to offer the greatest opportunity for outlandish delays. The delays fictionalised in the case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce chronicled in Bleak House …
Flock Estate v. Flock (Part 1)
25 years is a long time. It’s a quarter of a century, a generation, and longer than the twenty-first century has had to run thus far. Mr. Doran Flock and Ms. Arlene Flock bought a home in Calgary as joint tenants in 1993. Several months later they separated and Mr. Flock moved out and left the payment of Property related expenses to Ms. Flock. They …
A Straightforward Murder Case
It is a common observation that there is no such thing as a short murder trial any longer. Not long ago there were murder trials that took just a few days. Causes of this dramatic increase in trial length abound: the time required to assess Charter issues; the volume and complexity of forensic evidence; the sheer abundance of evidence available through modern life. R. v. …
MLB Pitch Clock and Law
The introduction of a pitch clock and other changes sped up Major League Baseball this past season and to general approval, larger viewing audiences, and even most diehard traditionalists seem to be happy. When I published my report “Criminal Justice for the 21st Century” in 2012, I was characterised by one reporter as taking a “Moneyball approach to justice”. Anne Milgram in The Atlantic also …
Puritanical Timeliness – John Cooke
We wrote earlier about Thomas More, The Man for All Seasons, and famous for standing by his principles against Henry VIII to the point of being beheaded in 1535. In the 17th century the revolutionary John Cooke met a similar end: he was hung, drawn and quartered in 1660 by Charles II as a regicide for acting as Charles I’s prosecutor. Both saw and acted …