Strange goings-on in Ontario. [Toronto Sun]
Posts Tagged ‘Canada’
“Canada keeps malpractice cost in check”
Susan Taylor Martin in the St. Petersburg Times has some striking numbers:
For neurosurgeons in Miami, the annual cost of medical malpractice insurance is astronomical — $237,000, far more than the median price of a house.
In Toronto, a neurosurgeon pays about $29,200 for coverage. It’s even less in Montreal ($20,600) and Vancouver ($10,650).
Among the reasons why: in 1978 the Canadian Supreme Court imposed (on its own) nationwide limits on pain-and-suffering recoveries, adjusted for inflation and now just over $300,000. A single mutual insurer covers most doctors and takes an aggressive approach to defending claims. Most cases are tried before judges. Billboard and TV advertising by lawyers is much less prevalent in Canada. And so forth — all aside from the loser-pays principle.
Canada’s loser-pays rules
A Canadian plaintiff’s lawyer credits them with reducing defendants’ propensity to file obstructive motions [AmLaw Daily, interviewing class action attorney Andrew Morganti — last paragraph]
August 3 roundup
- On the medicalization of nearly everything: “Bitterness, Compulsive Shopping, and Internet Addiction” [Christopher Lane, Slate]
- Lawyer representing Sarah Palin to blogger: do you want to be served with our defamation suit at the kindergarten where you help out? [Alaska Report via Rachel Weiner, HuffPo]
- “The 7 Most Baffling Criminal Defenses (That Sort of Worked)” [Cracked via Popehat]
- Canada: crash victim gets C$2M, sues deceased lawyer for omitting a defendant who’d have chipped in another C$1.3 million [Calgary Sun]
- Privacy breach notifications mostly a costly waste of time but do keep lawyers busy [Lee Gomes, Forbes]
- “News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters” [Citizen Media Law]
- North Carolina suit against TVA “a sweet gig for the state’s attorneys” [Wood, Point of Law]
- Blawg Review #223 is at Scott Greenfield’s [Simple Justice] with another part hosted at the Blawg Review home site itself.
Toronto foodie culture, under the table
Maclean’s reports on the “thriving black market in Canada for borderline illegal, locally produced foods,” from raw dairy products through illicit cured meats available to those with “the right social network”. “You’ve got to hook up with someone who’s got a hook-up. It’s like buying drugs,” says food writer Chris Nuttall-Smith. “Illegal eggs taste amazing.” (& welcome Hit & Run readers).
Canadian Indian schools: when reparations don’t repair
Missed from earlier this year: in the fall of 2007, following extensive litigation, the government of Canada began issuing payments to persons of Indian ancestry who had attended an officially promoted network of residential schools where abuse was common and whose aim of assimilating students into broader Canadian life was later assailed as calculated to suppress native culture. While the payments brought benefit to many recipients, among others they seem to have led to new cycles of dysfunction, family strife and substance abuse. [Jack Branswell and Ken Meaney, “Native suicides linked to compensation”, Canwest/National Post, Jan. 26 via Western Standard]
Canadian guards: securing border is too stressful
Most of the 37 guards who work at the Cornwall Island, Ontario border crossing have notes from doctors saying that tensions arising from relations with the local Mohawk Indian tribe make it too stressful to work there and could result in harmful health effects. [CanWest/Vancouver Sun]
Sue volunteer search-and-rescue teams enough…
…and maybe they’ll go away.
June 5 roundup
- See you in court, ma: “Man awarded $115K after suing mom for lost pinky finger” [Obscure Store, Bergen County (N.J.) Record]
- Please reassure us Canada’s not going to follow U.S. down abusive road of asset seizure in law enforcement [Moin Yahya and Janet Neilson, Western Standard]
- What sorts of intellectual property norms prevail in the world of stand-up comedy? [ConcurOp]
- “Marc Dreier’s Son Sues College Roommate for $1M” [ABA Journal]
- Intersection of state divorce law with peripatetic military life can lead to harsh results [Bader, CEI]
- Grape-Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts! Cap’n Crunch isn’t a real captain! It’s not fair! [comments on our popular “Crunchberries” item]
- “Lawyer’s ‘Contentious’ Claims Against Landlord Are Rejected” [NYLJ]
- “Adult” won’t cut it any more, we need a new legal category, more responsible, of “grownup” [Ken at Popehat]
“All it takes is one false allegation … I sit here as proof of that”
Harrowing story of Brian Leckie, an Ontario therapist and crisis counselor cleared on charges of sexual assault; the legal fees ate up his life savings, and there’s nowhere he can turn to get his good name back. “Only the ER nurses seemed to give me the benefit of the doubt, because they’ve seen it. They’ve seen the lies and the accusations that come through emergency rooms. They see it all the time.” Meanwhile, the two accusers whose charges a judge found to have “no credible” basis cannot even be named in the press because of a publication ban [Mark Bonokoski, “Justice for an innocent man”, Toronto Sun, May 4, via Amy Alkon]