Tag: Law

Social Host Liability

An odd bit of public welfare notification giving from the PEI Liquor Commission, an organization I recall as lacking a strong leadership role in public awareness on the risks associated with the product:

The 24-page guide, released in time for the holidays, gives tips on planning a party, recipes and bar-stocking ideas. It also includes sobering information on a person’s liability as a host, and dispels myths about alcohol consumption. The guide notes a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision that social hosts don’t have the same burden of responsibility that bars and restaurants do in ensuring guests do not leave intoxicated.

“A social host at a party where alcohol is served is not under a duty of care to members of the public who may be injured by a guest’s actions, unless the host’s conduct implicates him or her in the creation or exacerbation of the risk,” the top court ruled. “Short of active implication, a host is entitled to respect the autonomy of a guest. However, the PEI Liquor Control Commission’s booklet says, the Supreme Court ruling does not provide a carte blanche.”

That ruling from last May could and likely does have a more limited application than many have hope and here is why:

  • At para 26 the court says:

    I conclude that the necessary proximity has not been established and, consequently, that social hosts of parties where alcohol is served do not owe a duty of care to public users of highways. First, the injury to Ms. Childs was not reasonably foreseeable on the facts found by the trial judge. Second, even if foreseeability were established, no duty would arise because the wrong alleged is a failure to act or nonfeasance in circumstances where there was no positive duty to act.

    So where the wrong is an omission, a not doing of something, there is no duty.

  • Key facts by the trial judge found include the following at para 4:

    The party hosted by Dwight Courrier and Julie Zimmerman at their home was a “BYOB” (Bring Your Own Booze) event. The only alcohol served by the hosts was three-quarters of a bottle of champagne in small glasses at midnight. Mr. Desormeaux was known to his hosts to be a heavy drinker. The trial judge heard evidence that when Mr. Desormeaux walked to his car to leave, Mr. Courrier accompanied him and asked, “Are you okay, brother?” Mr. Desormeaux responded “No problem”, got behind the wheel and drove away with two passengers.

    So the hosts were not piling on the drinks, they were not serving the drinks, they were not “operating the bar”. They were not “acting.”

So what do you make of that? No duty to guests and those the guest might later injure arises where the host takes no party because in this case the hosts played a very limited part in the intoxication of the guest. Does that mean the law has changed in relation to the service of drinks by the host? Isn’t Christmas the time, unlike say 30 years ago, when people now host more parties where they serve the alcohol compared to the rest of the year?

To be very fair, I have not read the booklet and the news item says they have confirmed it is not a free for all. But be as careful as before. Take prudent advice. Don’t consider anything has changed when you are pouring the drinks. You may well still be as responsible as before in another set of circumstances. Do you want five to ten years in a court case that goes to the Supremes to find out?

The Final First Friday Of A Month Of 2006 Chat

I remember like it was yesterday that it was recently not now but that was a lot longer ago than I recall.

What is going on? It is a moving day for someone I know and I am lending a hand so a half day. It is also a double party evening. It’s been so long since one of them came a long I can’t recall how they work. Sweater vest and red tie for the first, ball cap and mandolin for the latter. Have we discussed “mand-o-lin”: violin for the hands, no?

  • Old logo good, new logo swooptastic!!!
  • This is neat if you have a British last name as illustrated by “Campbell” here.
  • This is just weird:

    When Christopher Fleming-Brown, a banker living in the exclusive area of Kensington, London, kicked a ball about with his five year-old son in a large private garden communally owned by the houses in his crescent, little did he know he would later face a two year court battle for inadvertently turning the garden into “a public recreation ground,” contrary to the Town Gardens Protection Act 1863…[because]…[l]ast November, a magistrate court held that this game did not constitute football, as there were no ‘teams’ involved. According to the present law, they concluded, teams means football…

    What!!! I am not one to just on the “Europe is dying” bandwagon but this is just…what…they appealed?

    This week, on her appeal, the High Court decided that Mr Fleming-Brown’s game had amounted to football, with Mr Lord Justice Waller saying that “By any common-sensical, natural interpretation the respondent and his son were playing football or a similar game.”

    Well that’s alright then.

  • Well, I suppose I better make my call on the Liberal Leadership Campaign:
    • Iggy – The Grit Stockwell Day. Day was elected, Iggy might be too. It will be weirder for a while and then it will be over.
    • Rae – the nicest guy in Canadian politics. If he wins I might vote for him as I have usually voted for some version of a soft socialist with a faint hope of winning power. Experience and I expect him to give a great speech. My hometown Senator Hugh made the point that few of the candidates have ever spoken to a crowd of 5,000. Rae has.
    • Dion – I don’t know that he has done anything to attract the attention of anyone who isn’t supporting him. Is he a Grit policy wonk?
    • Kennedy – less a no-chancer than three weeks ago but corduroy jackets are so 1974 and also 1994. He would probably make a good leader but he can make a good leader next time. They have to vote for someone who can win in six months.
    • Dryden – he played hockey, right?
    • The others – there are others?

      • I will likely track tomorrow’s second to sixth voting rounds via the radio.

  • Big brother has been watching…no, really – he’s my big brother…has been watching events and implications of the great “Wuzza nation?” debate and considers how nations have hockey teams so Quebec may now need one, too.
  • A freaky weather event may happen down our way later today:

    NORTHEAST WINDS AHEAD OF THE LOW PRESSURE AREA WILL DRAW DOWN THE WATER LEVELS ON EASTERN LAKE ERIE…BY ABOUT 2 FEET. THE SUDDEN SHIFT IN WINDS ALONG THE LENGTH OF LAKE ERIE AS THE COLD FRONT PASSES BY WILL LIKELY SET UP PRONOUNCED SEICH AND FORECAST PRODUCTS ARE SHOWING A RISE OF 8 FEET FROM THE LOWERED WATER LEVEL TO THE HIGHER WATER AS THE LAKE SHLOSHES BACK. A LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING WILL BE IN EFFECT FOR LAKE ERIE FOR THIS EVENING. LAKE RISES ARE POSSIBLE ON LAKE ONTARIO AS WELL…AS THIS STORM PATTERN IS SIMILAR TO AN EVENT IN FEBRUARY 2006. WATER LEVELS ALONG THE EASTERN SHORE OF LAKE ONTARIO AND THE UPPER SAINT LAWRENCE RIVER ROSE A COUPLE OF FEET FROM OSWEGO TO CAPE VINCENT AND DOWNSTREAM TO ALEXANDRIA BAY ON THE RIVER.

    Freaky. I wish there were some sort of over the counter product to deal with “PRONOUNCED SEICH”. On the upside, this is a rare boogie boarding opportunity.

  • I will go to the Dinosaur BBQ again. I do not care. I ♥ it.

That is it. Gotta go. That must be enough. Can’t you stop emailing me? Someone is at the door. What? WHAT??? Argghhhhhh!!!….

[Exeunt. Ovation. Bows. Exeunt. Fin.]

Oh No! Not Torynomics!

I had hope that we had seen the last of the habitual bad math but this report does little to give comfort:

Ottawa itself could lose as much as $218-million in annual hotel tax revenue alone, he said…”Talk about shooting yourself in the foot,” Mr. Pollard said. The value of international tour groups and conventions in hotels was $1.28-billion last year, he said. Canada’s convention business as a whole is worth more than $2-billion a year, another industry official said. The government cancelled the Goods and Services Tax rebate program late last month. It said the move would save $78.8-million and that less than 3 per cent of foreign visitors applied for the rebates anyway. But Mr. Pollard believes the government didn’t include conferences and group travel in its calculations because convention planners get the GST rebates up front, not after the fact.

These number may not pan out as the actuals – do they ever – but as the looming bubble burst approaches doing things to make bits of the economy less competitive is an odd approach for a traditionally pro-business party. The whole tax policy thing is odd when you think about it: increasing income tax, the big-talk do-little GST shift, the uncertainty about moving around tax credits between levels of government, the beer and popcorn money tht makes my kids pay for your kids and now this.

It raises the more interesting and non-partisan question of “why is tax hard?” One likely reason is that it is used as a mechanism for other social and economic policy. It is a tool. If the policy is not well scoped out, perhaps difficulties will show in the tax side of the matter. But what policy goal is achieved by adding $78.8-million to the cost of international business and travel into Canada?

Cheese 2020

Just so we are clear, I am pro-cheese. I use these little observational techniques like what if it was like this and then – voom – nothing but emails from cheesemakers. But do they hold Cheese 2020 think tank get togethers, too?

The internet will be a thriving, low-cost network of billions of devices by 2020, says a major survey of leading technology thinkers… More than half of respondents had a positive vision of the net’s future but 46% had serious reservations. Almost 60% said that a counter culture of Luddites would emerge, some resorting to violence.

That is odd. Seeing as the persent lot of luddites who would terrorize us back into the medieval rely largely upon the internet to discuss this way and that way to remove rights though violence, why would they attack the internet? Where can this foolisness being coming from?

“Today’s eco-terrorists are the harbingers of this likely trend,” wrote Ed Lyell, an expert on the internet and education. “Every age has a small percentage that cling to an overrated past of low technology, low energy, lifestyle.”

“Of course there will be more Unabombers,” wrote Cory Doctorow of blog BoingBoing. Some commentators felt that the violence would either be tied to the effects of technology, rather than the technology itself, or possibly civil action around issues such as privacy.

Oh. My. God. Cory figured out a new one. And soon Dave Winer will take credit for it. [Ed.: rimshot! Yawn.] Of course there will be more. How else to get on conference speaker lists? There really should be a 20% of a year’s income deposit for these sorts of statements. If only because they should be pulled out and made accountable. And you should have to make six- and eighteen-month predictions along with the long term ones so we can judge the actual skills of the foreshadowing futurist. And for the creation and neato-sourcing of an idea like “the Unabomber of the Internet” so that 27 jerks can now start day dreaming about it.

The Day of Fri Is When There Is Chat

What a week – a blur. I swear I was 27 when it started and now I have kids
and a mortgage. Thing I learned? Buying gifts for a kids party was easier when
they were two. You can buy an old shoe and stick some red masking tape on it and
a two-year old would be happy. Now they have taste and ideas. I am doomed.

  • Rummy Update: You know I am a Powellista so find these things Rummy says funny in a really sad and depressing funny kinda way:

    “Many of the terrorists who have not been killed or captured are on the run. They have lost their sanctuary in Afghanistan. And they have lost a supporter in Iraq, which paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers…”

    The observation I would make is that the actions the Canadian Forces have made in Afghanistan in the last few weeks to clear an area of the Taliban happened “about 15 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city” and so far “about 65 per cent of the contested area, measuring perhaps four kilometres by five kilometres, has been formally cleared of insurgents.” I am a big booster of what our Canadian Forces are doing there but characterizing what has happening so far after almost five years of continuing warfare as a “loss of sanctuary” in a country of 652,225 square kilometres is not quite an accurate statement.

  • I came across a blog by an English Magistrate, including this
    post     complaining that not enough prosecutions are being brought before
    her/him for short-pouring beer. That is my kinda judge.

  • Everytime I read articles like this about Alberta’s
    oil windfall     I get the giggles over the twit that argued the difference
    between Alberta and the rest of Canada was not the largest oil deposit in the
    universe but the prevalence of socialism elsewhere.

  • I just finished Pete Brown’s book Three Sheets to the Wind. I have to
    do a proper review over at A Good Beer Blog after fellow beer blogger Knut of Norway and I pose the author some
    questions. I reviewed his last book here. This one
    is even better – a romp around the world to figure out how each culture includes
    beer.

  • Was yesterday the day that lame duck
    began in the US presidency?

    Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by
    the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with
    impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona,
    John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three were
    joined on Thursday by Colin L. Powell, formerly the secretary of state and the
    chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in challenging the administration’s
    approach.

    It is one of those rare Congressional moments when the policy is as
    monumental as the politics.

    When you look ahead, the road to
    January 2009 could be a very long and weird path. That being said, Democrat Eliot Spitzer, the next Governor of
    NY, has really good TV ads. The public good as a matter of responsibility – who
    knew? If I were in the southern sector of Easlakia, I could see myself getting
    involved.

  • Say
    it ain’t so, Dog    .

  • How to identify when you have a Jr. B pope on your
    hands. And get in line, Islamic world. He was giving
    us the gears     last week. Time again for the Avenging Lumberjacks of the
    Reformation, Canada’s moderate protestant underground based in the Yukon, to
    come out of the shadows of the forest to take a stand.

Well, that is
enough for now. What to look forward to this weekend? Syracuse at Illinois
Saturday at noon if you have the 37 billion channel universe. Sox and Yankees if
you like human sacrifice.

I Never Liked Starbucks

I went once in Vancouver, paid waaaaay too much for essentially a 25 cent product and never went back. But apparently some people want their Starbucks coffee quite badly:

A Starbucks customer in the US who was told her free drink voucher was worthless is launching a $114m (£60m) lawsuit against the coffee colossus. Starbucks pulled the free drink offer, saying it had been redistributed beyond its original intent.

There is this thing in law called de minimus, things so tiny that the law can’t see them so it doesn’t bother with them. A free coupon for a coffee is about as de minimus as I can imagine.

Gee…The Constitution Does Govern

Speaking of constitutions and freedoms and stuff, here is the opinion part of the ruling of the Federal Court on the suspension of the US administration’s domestic surveillance program. Great paragraph at page 40:

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all powers must derive from that Constitution.

Via the Jurist.

Good News For Freedom

Good to read this news out of the Supreme Court of Canada this morning:

HUMAN RIGHTS: “POLITICAL BELIEF” DISCRIMINATION

The Respondents were a group of occasional provincial government employees and members of the Provincial Liberal Party, who were either not recalled to work or had their hours of work reduced after the Provincial Conservatives came into power in P.E.I. in 1996. They filed complaints with the Human Rights Commission alleging “political belief” discrimination. While the cases were pending, the Conservative government amended the Human Rights Act , limiting the amount the employees could recover, and preventing them from seeking other remedies available to complaints brought on other grounds of discrimination. The Respondents alleged that the amendments violated ss. 15(1), 2(b) and 2(d) of the Charter. The Prince Edward Island Supreme Court declared the statutory limitation on the available remedies for “political belief” discrimination and the compensation formula prescribed by ss. 28.4(2) to (5) of the P.E.I. Human Rights Act contrary to ss. 15(1), 2(b) and 2(d) of the Charter , and not saved by s. 1. The Appeal Division unanimously upheld the trial judge’s decision with respect to s. 2(d) of the Charter. The Appeal Division did not address the issues of ss. 15(1) or 2(b). Government of Prince Edward Island v. Merrill Condon, et al. (P.E.I. C.A., February 16, 2006)(31416) “with costs”

As I have noted here before and provided more background to the related rulings under the “political rights” heading, I was involved in the original level of this matter before I left private practice. The only thing that diminishes the ruling today and its implication that there is no argument to be made in favour of imposing unconstitutionality upon our political freedom in Canada, is that I was really hoping to get to sit in on a hearing, watching at the back in the cheap seats in the biggest of the courts of the land.

Friday Chat From The New HQ

A while ago I wondered about the point when a move is really made as opposed to finished. Turns out it is not the beds or the telephone but the stuff on the walls. As soon as you put the framed stuff up, your interior is yours. Forget about the TV. That just costs you an hour of sleep and night.

  • And speaking of losing sleep, if the Red Sox lose both the AL East and the wildcard and miss the playoffs blame this week. They have gone 1 out of 6 against Tampa and KC, two teams who are a combined 57 games back. This is a complete embarassment.
  • We forget sometimes that in all the concerns of the day that there are still the legacies of the last sentury to deal with including Conrad Black. Apparently he has to find more money to give the court confidence he will show up:

    Conrad Black’s bail was raised Thursday by another $1-million (U.S.) in cash, but the erstwhile media baron managed to score one important legal victory: His wife won’t be forced to reveal her financial affairs under oath.

    An interesting morality play.

  • Personally, I avoid technologies that make me feel like I am going to be sick – parachutes, roller coasters and Imax.
  • I find it odd that I am not entirely caught up with the liquid bomb story. I think Al Queda has lost me thanks to the skill of the British police’s anti-terrorism unit. I do not assume all will be well. But they are pretty good at making sure all is well. Maybe Al Queda will be content with reverse psychology as its resources thin and its manpower fades.

Must make coffee. Maybe more later. What stories are you following anyway?