News

Nova Scotia Plaintiff awarded $60,000 for unrelenting social media criticism

The case of Terris v. Meisner arose from what the trial judge found to be a sad, regrettable set of facts. The defendant’s son was an intellectually disabled adult who was a longtime resident of a care home, at which the plaintiff worked as a nurse. The son had a history of being physically violent to himself and others. One night in 2016 the son became extremely agitated and, due to understaffing, had to be restrained; among other behaviour he was flinging feces at people, some of which hit the plaintiff, who was among the staff dealing with the situation. At one point a hand towel was placed in front of his face, apparently to keep him from spitting on people; the hand towel was misidentified in notes as a “pillowcase” though that was later corrected.

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Alberta law effectively turned scrap dealers into state agents

In R v Khairullah, the Alberta Court of Justice was asked by an accused to declare that an Alberta law’s requirement that scrap metal dealers collect personal information from scrap metal sellers, which is entered into a police-accessible database, is an unreasonable search under section 8 of the Charter. The Court found that requiring a private business to gather personal information from a lawful seller of scrap metal made the business an agent of the state, and the breadth of personal information and how it was stored resulted in a violation of section 8 of the Charter. This decision may have broader application in other “know your customer” contexts. 

The accused, a scrap metal dealer, was previously charged with violating the Scrap Metal Dealers and Recyclers Identification Act. He challenged the constitutionality of the Act and regulations (addressed in 2023 ABCJ 235 and 2024 ABKB 286), and also challenged the customer identification requirements under section 8 of the Charter.

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Majority of the Court of Appeal find a thumbs up emoji was an electronic signature for the purposes of The Sale of Goods Act

In Achter Land & Cattle Ltd. v South West Terminal Ltd., the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal was called upon to consider whether a contract was validly formed under the province’s Sale of Goods Act via a replied “thumbs up” emoji.

A purchaser of grain and a commodities vendor disputed whether a valid contract arose for the sale of grain, the discussion of which took place over text messages. An employee of the vendor sent a proposed agreement to the putative purchaser and requested confirmation. The proposed agreement was an image of the front page of the proposed agreement, along with the words “Please confirm flax contract.” What came back was a simple thumbs up emoji. 

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As resources for dealing with AI in legal settings emerge, so too do court decisions dealing with it as evidence

The Canadian legal world has slowly but surely begun various efforts to figure out, react to and (in appropriate circumstances) embrace the many issues raised by the onslaught of “artificial intelligence” (AI) and specifically one of its main manifestations, “generative artificial intelligence” (GenAI). GenAI, as is well known, is the subset of AI that creates content (text, images, sounds), its capacity for which is generated by “training” on large sets of data (the latter has been gained primarily from internet scraping, which has generated numerous intellectual property issues and at least one federal government consultation report). In law as in many sectors, much attention has been focused on “large language models” (LLMs), GenAI platforms that produce text and images in response to user prompts, and are designed to mimic human behaviour and/or tasks.

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L. Kerry Vickar Business Law Clinic students at the 2024 Fall CAN-TECH conference. Left to right: Ken Vong (2L), Daniel Rosenthal (3L), Paul Chorney (2L), Serena Bevilacqua (2L), Connor Giesbrecht (3L), Jennifer Davidson Partner at Deeth Williams Wall LLP and Past President of CAN-TECH, Andrew Alleyne Partner at Fasken and President of CAN-TECH, Skylar Ferbers (3L), Lauren Martin (3L), Jordan Wagner (3L), Kassandra Taverner (3L) and Carly Lafond (3L).

We were delighted to come across Skylar Ferbers and Lauren Martin's article from the University of Manitoba, L . Kerry Vickar Business Law Clinic  on the Manitoba students who participated in this year’s 2024 CAN-TECH Fall Conference - Exploring New Frontiers in Technology and Law in Toronto. In the article, Skylar and Lauren capture the students' drive and enthusiasm, shining a light on their innovative contributions and insightful perspectives on the future of technology law in Canada.

This year’s conference offered a platform for these young professionals to network with industry leaders, learn about the latest advancements, and gain firsthand experience in a rapidly evolving field. It’s inspiring to see how Manitoba’s next generation is already making strides, as Skylar and Lauren beautifully details in their article.

We invite our readers to explore the full article here for an in-depth look at the students’ experiences and achievements.

Thank you, Skylar and Lauren, for such a well-crafted and inspiring article.

https://www.cantechlaw.ca/cantechawards

The 2024 CAN-TECH Fall Conference Awards was a fantastic event, honoring two exceptional individuals in the field of technology law. Andrew Nunes received the CAN-TECH Award of Distinction, and Shreya Gupta was recognized with the CAN-TECH Rising Star in Tech Law Award, at the CAN-TECH Fall Conference Dinner, presented by Andrew Alleyne, CAN-TECH Law President.

The Annual Fall Conference Dinner provided the perfect setting to honor these outstanding individuals. We offer our congratulations to Andrew Nunes and Shreya Gupta and extend our gratitude to all the attendees who made this event a success. Your presence added depth to the celebration of excellence in technology law, and we look forward to future gatherings.

           

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Regulation of the production of AI “products”—is it possible? And how? Some interesting insights in this article: 

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Consent is to be determined on an objective standard, and “trust but verify” those who get access to personal information

On September 9, 2024, a unanimous three judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeal fully reversed the factual conclusions of the court below to conclude that Facebook had violated the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) in connection with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Rather than sending it back to the Federal Court to be determined by another judge, they reached their own conclusions and invited submissions on remedy.

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Ontario Court of Appeal rules that random or unsubstantiated searches are unconstitutional—reasonable suspicion required

For a goodly amount of time, concern has been expressed about the tendency of Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers and other border officials to search devices (phones, tablets, laptops) in the possession of people arriving at Canada’s border, without having to demonstrate any grounds for so doing. In particular, s. 99(1)(a) of the federal Customs Act permits, on its face, officers to search “goods that have been imported” without judicial authorization or grounds for the search whatsoever. It is this provision that has been invoked as authority for device searches, despite the intense privacy concerns that attach to devices and their contents, and the Crown’s position has seen pushback in litigation, before Parliament and in the literature.

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We are very pleased to announce Shreya Gupta as the winner of the 2024 CAN-TECH Rising Star in Tech Law Award.

Shreya Gupta is Director, Legal Counsel (Technology, AI and Privacy) at Loblaw Companies Limited. Prior to Loblaw, Shreya was an associate in Norton Rose Fulbright's Toronto office.  Shreya focuses on technology, artificial intelligence, privacy, cybersecurity and information governance matters. She also advises clients entering into a variety of complex commercial transactions. Shreya is a skilled negotiator and has successfully drafted technology-focused agreements and led negotiations on behalf of startups as well as large organizations. She takes a very practical approach to advising clients and relies on her business background and expertise in doing so.

Shreya recently co-authored a book published by LexisNexis titled, “Legal Guide to Emerging Technologies.” In 2022-2023, Shreya also served as acting general counsel (on secondment) at 7shifts Inc., a team management software provider, while simultaneously managing a busy technology practice at NRF.

Shreya is recognized as a leader by her colleagues given her involvement at NRF as well as in the community. She served as the Co-Chair of NRF’s Race Equity Council for the past four years since its inauguration in Canada to progress the firm's race equity strategy, and regularly speaks on panels and delivers training sessions on technology and privacy matters.