The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Wednesday that former newspaper mogul Conrad Black is entitled to pursue libel suits in Ontario against the authors of a report that said he ran his U.S.-based media company, Hollinger International Inc, like a “corporate kleptocracy”.

Conrad Black and his wife Barbara Amiel leave federal court in Chicago, June 24, 2011. (Photo: John Gress/Reuters)

Black, 67, is currently serving a prison sentence in Florida for fraud and obstruction of justice and expects to be released next month. His spokesman Adam Daifallah said Black was delighted with the Canadian court’s ruling.

But an agreement to settle the defamation suits and other court actions, reached after the Supreme Court heard the case in March 2011, could render the ruling in Breeden v. Black moot.

Black has sought more than $2.3 billion in damages in his libel suits. The defendants are Richard Breeden, a former head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who spearheaded a 2004 Hollinger committee report on Black’s practices, along with three committee members, and other former Hollinger directors.

The report said Black, a former Canadian citizen who is now a member of the British House of Lords, looted publisher Hollinger International of hundreds of millions of dollars. Black denies the charge.

Hollinger used to own Britain’s Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post, the Chicago Sun-Times and many other papers.

In a statement on Wednesday, Daifallah said Black and the defendants had entered into a memorandum of understanding to resolve these legal actions as well as others in the United States.

“The settlement remains subject to court approvals in Ontario and Delaware and, once approved, disposes of these actions notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s favorable decision today,” Daifallah said. No money has yet been exchanged.

Earlier, he characterized the agreement as enforceable and as one that would not be affected by the Supreme Court decision.

The defendants say their comments were justified, and they were doing what was required under U.S. securities law.

The Supreme Court dismissed arguments by the defendants that Black was a “libel tourist” who shopped for the easiest jurisdiction to win his case. Black had filed a number of libel lawsuits not connected to this case.

Black’s lawyers argued his reputation was more tied to Ontario than anywhere else, even though Black gave up Canadian citizenship. Black is now a British citizen.

Jacques Audette, a veteran labour lawyer whose clients include the Montreal municipal police force, has been caught up in the net thrown around 15 people and two engineering and construction companies Tuesday in a major dawn operation by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad.

Jacques Audette

Audette, 59, a partner at the Montreal office of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP for almost 10 years, now faces six charges under the Criminal Code including fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, breach of trust, fraud on a government, and influencing a municipal official in Mascouche, a city north of Montreal.

Mascouche Mayor Richard Marcotte, Quebec construction business kingpin Antonio (Tony) Accurso, and Louis-George Boudreault, a long-time Quebec Liberal Party organizer, are also among those facing a total of 47 charges as a result of the massive search and arrest operation by more than 120 police officers and civilian investigators working with Quebec’s Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC), an entity created last year to look into questionable practices in public works and provisioning contracts and fight against corruption.

Dubbed Operation Gravel, an 18-month investigation “allowed us to establish that a system had been put in place a few years ago allowing certain companies to gain an advantage towards the attribution of municipal contracts,” Quebec provincial police Lt. Guy Lapointe said at a news conference.

Police said the arrests and charges — including those laid against engineering company BPR-Triax Inc. and construction firm Transport et Excavation Mascouche Inc. — followed an analysis of seized documents and computer hard drives, 120 interviews and — and according to the Montreal La Presse newspaper — a mole working on the inside on behalf of UPAC.

Fasken Martineau acknowledged Audette’s arrest in a brief statement Tuesday.

“As there is an ongoing police investigation, the firm is unable to offer additional comment,” Fasken said, adding that it “will cooperate fully with any inquiries by the Sûreté du Québec (Quebec’s provincial police force).”

Audette’s bio on the law firm’s web page does not mention any municipal public works contracts but notes that the lawyer “has been very active at the municipal level since the beginning of his (30-year) career. He was an important player in municipal mergers, mainly on the island of Montreal.”

Clients that are mentioned include the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) in “many highly publicized and important labour relations cases,” the Société des alcools du Québec, the government-owned corporation for liquor trade in the province, and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA).

As the media and social media sizzled over Tuesday’s police swoop down, the filing of criminal charges, and speculation about how ongoing investigations might affect other companies and lawyers who act for them, Quebec Premier Jean Charest said Tuesday’s operation demonstrates that “no one is above the law.”

Audette and the other suspects — with the exception of the Mascouche mayor who was reported to be in Cuba on holiday — were taken to holding cells headquarters of Sûreté du Québec headquarters, but later released.

They are set to respond to charges in a court appearance scheduled for June 19.

The federal government said Tuesday it will ease immigration rules for skilled workers as it looks to alleviate labour shortages in the oil, mining, and construction industries.

Jason Kenney says the government will modify the Skilled Worker Program to try to attract trades people and other skilled workers. (Photo: Chris Wattie/Reuters)

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the government will modify its Federal Skilled Worker Program, which has been skewed towards professionals, to try to attract trades people and other skilled workers that are in short supply in Canada during the current commodities boom.

The new system will also increase the role of employers in the immigration system, allowing them to fill vital jobs faster.

“In the past it would be virtually impossible for skilled trades people to get past our rigid economic immigration programs,” Kenney said in a speech to a Calgary business audience. “They would need post-secondary degrees and high levels of language proficiency. This meant ... skilled workers couldn’t get in.”

Kenney said the new program will be based on job offers from Canadian employers that can show that the would-be immigrant has credentials and experience equivalent to Canadian certification standards.

Immigrants admitted under the new plan would not be required to be as fluent in English or French as professional applicants must be, though some language requirements would still apply.

According to ministry data, skilled workers currently make up just three per cent of all foreign skilled workers emigrating to Canada. Kenney said he expected the new rules to attract “several thousand” skilled workers initially, and then become more popular.

High prices for oil, metals and minerals have sparked an investment boom in Canada, squeezing the available supply of skilled labor and forcing employers to import temporary foreign labour to fill staffing gaps, a measure that Kenney said may be less needed as more skilled workers emigrate to Canada.

“The temporary foreign worker program is there for acute and short-term labour shortages and that will probably always be in some demand,” he said. “But I hope that by better linking the permanent immigrants with labor shortages there will be less dependence on the temporary foreign program.”

The government expects the new program to be in place later this year.

The federal government announced 12 judicial appointments in four provinces yesterday.

In Ontario, there were five appointments. The first is Justice Edward Ducharme, who is moving to the Ontario Court of Appeal after serving as the regional senior judge of the Superior Court of Justice in London, Ont. Prior to his appointment to the Superior Court of Justice in 2002, he was a bencher for the Law Society of Upper Canada and a partner at Ducharme Fox LLP. Ducharme replaces Justice Michael Moldaver who was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Replacing Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, the other Ontario judge elevated to the Supreme Court of Canada, is Justice Sarah Pepall, who is also moving from the Superior Court to the Court of Appeal. She was appointed to the bench in 1999 and prior to that she was a partner at McMillan Binch (now McMillan LLP).

Justices James Turnbull and Stephen Glithero are having a bit of a job-swap. Turnbull is replacing Glithero and Glithero is replacing him. Thurnbull has been a judge of the Superior Court of Justice since 2005 and has been appointed to be the regional senior judge of the Central Southern Region. Glithero is being re-appointed as a puisne judge of the Superior Court in Simcoe. He has been on the bench since 1992.

Denise Korpan is the final appointment in Ontario. She was a lawyer with Siskinds LLP in London and will now be a judge of the Superior Court, family court branch. At Siskinds, she mainly practised family law with a little bit of estate litigation. She will be replacing Justice Mary Marshman who has become a supernumerary judge.

Robinson Sheppard Shapiro litigator François Duprat of Montreal has been appointed to the Superior Court of Quebec.

Five appointments have been made in Quebec.

Justice Marie St-Pierre is moving from the Superior Court of Quebec to the Court of Appeal. She was appointed to the bench in 2002, and before that worked at Desjardins Ducharme Stein Monast as well as Blain Piché Emery and Associates. She is replacing Justice Jacques Chamberland who was elected to be a supernumerary judge.

Justice Clément Gascon has served as a puisne judge of the Superior Court and is now being appointed to the Court of Appeal to take the place of Jusice André Rochon who is now a supernumerary judge. Gascon was appointed to the Superior Court in 2002, and prior to that practised civil and commercial law at Heenan Blaikie LLP.

Civil and commercial litigator Gary Morrison of Heenan Blaikie also joins the Superior Court bench, where he replaces Gascon.

Robinson Sheppard Shapiro litigator François Duprat of Montreal has been appointed to the Superior Court of Quebec. He is replacing Justice Joel Silcoff who has chosen to become a supernumerary judge.

The final addition to the Quebec judiciary is Marie-Claude Lalande, a lawyer with Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie in Montréal. She has been appointed to the Superior Court of Quebec as a puisne judge to replace Justice St-Pierre who is moving to the Court of Appeal.

Saskatechwan’s new appointment is Brian Barrington-Foote, a partner at MacPherson Leslie & Tyerman LLP. He practised aboriginal, labour and employment, constitutional, commercial and administrative law, as well as civil litigation. He has been appointed to the Court of Queen’s Bench and is replacing Justice Ellen Gunn, who has become a supernumerary judge.

The final appointment is in British Columbia. Justice David Harris is being appointed to the Court of Appeal after two years at the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Before becoming a judge in 2010, he practised civil litigation as a lawyer at Hunter Litigation Chambers in Vancouver. He is replacing Justice David Tysoe who has become a supernumerary judge.

The semi-finalists for Canada’s Got Talent chose Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP to represent them during their post-show contract negotiations.

One of the show’s finalists FRESHH, a seven-member teen dance group from Vancouver.

For the musical acts, the team negotiated potential recording contracts and for the performance-based acts the contracts were more video based. Also, touring agreements were made for after the conclusion of the show.

“You know, Canada does have talent,” said Len Glickman, a partner in Cassels Brock’s entertainment law group. “And I think this show is really showcasing that.”

The firm was hired about a month ago and negotiations for all 37 semi-finalists concluded before the airing of the live shows on April 2. The legal team consisted of lawyers Jessica Fingerhut, and Colin Pendrith along with Glickman. They were also aided by articling student Gillian Carter.

In order to choose their law firm, the contestants from across the country listened to presentations from three firms during a conference call.

The three firms were chosen by the producers of the show who wanted, according to Glickman, to “give the contestants options, just so that the contestants don’t feel like they are being told who to retain, that they are given the opportunity to hear from different people.”

Then the contestants voted for who they wanted to represent them and Cassels Brock came out on top.

This process is typical for how the American talent shows work, according to Glickman.

In working with the contestants, the legal team had to accommodate many different types of artists including those that were francophone and those who were minors. For their French speaking clients, the team called in their bilingual colleagues and for the contestants under 18, parents had to be involved and have agreements of their own.

Glickman says all of the parents for this show were “a pleasure to work with. All of the parents that we dealt with here were great. There have been other situations with other clients where you have parents who are intervening and sometimes not always acting in their children’s best interests, but there was none of that here.”

The project was a lot of work but Glickman says it was fun.

“What’s great about our practice is you work with clients and then you see them, whether its watching a concert or going to a play, or watching a show. So after you’ve negotiated hard for a whole bunch of clients then you sit down Monday night and you watch the show, and you go ‘hey, those are our clients.’ You really find yourself pulling for them.”

Any contracts negotiated by Cassels Brock are not listed as official prizes of the show. The winner is given $100,000, a new Nissan Nissan GT-R, and the opportunity to perform at Citytv’s 2013 New Years Eve Bash. The winner may also have the opportunity to perform in Las Vegas, but that is not guaranteed and the venue has not been confirmed.

After much speculation as to where he would land, former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Ian Binnie will be joining Toronto litigation boutique of Lenczner Slaght Royce Smith Griffin LLP as counsel. Binnie will provide strategic and practical advice, as well as dispute resolution expertise, to his colleagues and the firm’s clients.

Former SCC justice Ian Binnie is joining Toronto litigation firm Lenczner Slaght. (Photo: Glenn Kauth)

“Lenczner Slaght has great people and great work,” said Binnie, “and for me there is the added bonus of being able to practise again with many of the same talented people I worked with before going on the bench.”

Binnie, who in 1998 was appointed to the SCC bench directly from the bar, was a top commercial litigator before joining the court.

“Ian Binnie was widely recognized as one of Canada’s leading litigators while in practice and after that one of our finest judges,” said Peter Griffin, managing partner of Lenczner Slaght. “We are delighted to have him join us. We, and our clients, look forward to benefiting from his unique expertise.”

In nearly 14 years on the bench, Binnie authored 170 opinions, many in significant cases involving intellectual property, defamation, and constitutional and administrative law. His landmark judgments enlarged the fair comment defence in defamation cases, established privilege for journalists’ confidential sources and led to a framework for the courts to use in analyzing when to override liability-limitation clauses in contracts.

Binnie practised for three decades in courtrooms across the country and in the mid-1980s, served for four years as Canada’s Associate Deputy Minister of Justice. He was later appointed special parliamentary counsel to the joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Meech Lake Accord. He has an LLB and LLM from the University of Cambridge and an LLB from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He was called to the bar of England in 1966, the Ontario bar in 1967, and the Yukon Bar in 1985.

In addition to acting as counsel at Lenczner Slaght, Mr. Binnie will be a resident arbitrator at newly formed Arbitration Place in Toronto.

Retired Vancouver criminal lawyer Jay Clarke, who has written 14 crime thrillers under the pen name Michael Slade, will hold a one-day writing session at Simon Fraser University. The six-hour workshop on “How to Write a Mystery Thriller” will be held at the Southbank Surrey campus on Saturday, July 14.

Clarke said in an e-mail that 2012 is shaping up as a busy year for Slade as all the 14 books from Headhunter (1984) through to Red Snow (2010) are being put into digital format for e-publishing later this year under the brand name “Mountie Noir.”

For all those who enjoy the legal history and the inside working of the Vancouver legal community that Clarke brings to the Slade series, there is another book destined to hit the stands by year end or early 2013. Much of the backgrounder to how Clarke derived his topics and collaborated with individuals can be found on the official Michael Slade web site. 

Joining a growing campaign to combat racism, members of the Osgoode Hall Law School community — including dean Lorne Sossin — today donned hoodies in memory of Trayvon Martin.

Martin, an unarmed black teen walking home from the store, was shot dead by George Zimmerman on Feb. 26 in Florida.

“Over the ensuing weeks, the pervading rhetoric has been that this would not have occurred if Trayvon was not wearing a hoodie. In response to this rhetoric, communities across North America have donned hoodies in memory of Trayvon and to trouble the notion that it was the hoodie that led to his death,” The Black Law Students Association at Osgoode said in a press release.

“As black law students, and as members of the broader Osgoode community, we encourage fellow members of the legal community to end impunity for racial profiling. Wearing a hoodie is not an invitation to shoot, or to investigate an individual and neither should their race. Today, we stand in solidarity with Trayvon and his family.”

The association noted that the “smear campaign” being waged against Martin speaks to the pervasiveness of racism in the American legal system.

Canada’s three biggest tobacco companies, all with multinational parents, face C$27 billion ($27.30 billion) in damages and penalties as the largest civil lawsuit in the country’s history gets underway on Monday

John Kiser, in-house counsel for Imperial Tobacco Canada, waits for the start of the trial in Montreal this morning. (Photo: Reuters/Christinne Muschi)

The companies, Imperial Tobacco Canada, JTI-Macdonald Corp., and Rothmans Benson & Hedges, are named in the class-action suit by a group of current and former smokers in the trial, which takes place in Quebec Superior Court in Montreal.

At question is whether the companies adequately warned smokers of the dangers of cigarettes. It is the first time tobacco companies have gone to trial in a civil suit in Canada. The case is being heard before Quebec Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan and will likely take well into next year to complete.

The plaintiffs say they were hoodwinked into buying an addictive product and have since developed a range of smoking-related illnesses including lung cancer and emphysema.

More than 10,000 people die each year in the Canadian province of Quebec from causes directly linked to smoking. Quebec’s annual healthcare spending on tobacco-related ailments tops $1 billion according to the Canadian Cancer Society. Imperial Tobacco Canada, a division of British American Tobacco, issued a statement on Monday noting that the risks of smoking have been known for years and calling the lawsuit “an opportunistic cash grab”.

JTI-Macdonald Corp. is a division of Japan Tobacco International and Rothmans Benson & Hedges Inc. is a division of Philip Morris International. The Canadian government regulates and taxes the tobacco industry, and has imposed graphic warnings on cigarette packages in recent years. Canada also restricts how tobacco is marketed and sold in an effort to dissuade consumption. Separately, numerous Canadian provinces are teaming up to sue tobacco companies in hopes of recovering billions of healthcare dollars spent to treat the victims of tobacco use.   

Read more about the team from Imperial Tobacco’s preparation for the case in the recent Canadian Lawyer InHouse story “Ready for battle.”

Just weeks ago, Ugandan MP David Bahati reintroduced anti-homosexuality legislation that can mean the death penalty for a “serial offender” of the “offence of homosexuality.”

Ugandan lawyer Adrian Jjuuko was in Toronto last week to promote awareness of the attacks on human rights in his country. (Photo: Gail J. Cohen)

The infamous anti-gay bill, originally introduced in 2009, died when the parliamentary session expired before it was debated. The bill was widely condemned by national and international human rights groups as well as the government’s of many Western nations. Many see its re-introduction as a sign of contempt for Western governments’ meddling in the internal politics of African nations, including threats holding back of aid money.

“If there was any condition to force the Western world to stop giving us money, I would like that,” Bahati is quoted as saying in The New York Times.

And it is the issue of flagrant human rights violations, including the violence and potential severe punishments that accompany them, that brought Ugandan lawyer and human rights activist Adrian Jjuuko to Toronto last week.

He was in town to present a paper on Ugandan lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender asylum seekers and how if the anti-homosexuality bill passed it would mean Canada would likely face many more refugees from his country.

Jjuuko for the last two years has been co-ordinator of the Civil Society Coalition opposing the anti-homsexuality bill. He currently chairs the legal team of the coalition.He is also part of Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights, a Canadian-led international project on the impact of criminalizing sexual orientation and gender identity.

But while his trip to Canada focused extensively on the anti-homosexuality bill — “A draconian law. It violates the rights of the person.” — Jjuuko told Legal Feeds human rights violations of all kinds are rampant in his home country.

“Human rights for all people are under attack in Uganda today and the anti- homsexuality bill is just one of those direct attacks,” he says.

He urges Canadians, particularly lawyers through their bar organizations and law societies, to voice their support for all human rights by writing to the speaker of parliament in Uganda about the bill, talking to the Canadian government about supporting human rights, engaging with the law society in Uganda, and writing opinion pieces in the media.

“This should concern everyone,” he says. “There are lots of human rights violations in Uganda beyond [the anti-gay bill]. Only mentioning LGBT rights can makeit easy for legislators to duck behind the excuse of gay rights being a “western” issue being foisted upon them by neo-colonials.

When Bahati reintroduced the anti-homosexuality bill, he got a standing ovation with parliamentarians clapping and chanting “our bill,” says Jjuuko. “If left to Parliament, it will pass. It has overwhelming support from both sides of the house.”

The bill includes offences such as the “promotion” of homosexuality and “aggravated homosexuality,” which can include same-sex relations with a disabled person, even if it is consensual, and sex with a minor, which Jjuuko notes is already covered by other criminal laws.” Some small changes from the original 2009 bill have been suggested by the parliamentary committee but “the worst parts of it are still there including the death penalty which is now proposed by reference,” he says.

He points out that the work activists like himself do, promoting human rights for all, is regarded as the promotion of homosexuality and could net him seven years in prison under the proposed law.

The affable young lawyer is very passionate about what he does despite the danger he faces. For instance, he has had to move his home a number of times in the last few years, he receives lots of hate mail from people “threatening abusing and threatening,” he says. It’s all forced to him to have to get security training to protect himself.

“Most of the time, you have to check behind your back.”