Illustration: Todd Julie

In my last Top Court Tales, published in January, I picked R. v. Sinclair as the worst Supreme Court of Canada decision of 2010. Sinclair was pretty bad, on the wrong side of good sense and civil liberty, but as it turns out I jumped the gun. Sinclair looks good next to the egregious Reference re Assisted Human Reproduction Act, released three days before Christmas and after I wrote the previous column. Perhaps the Supreme Court hoped that, overwhelmed by festive cheer, we’d miss this decision.

Now that we are through the season of holiday excess, we now enter the period of new resolve. Even our prime minister shyly gave his tummy a little pat to indicate what his new year’s resolution was going to be. But for a growing number of obese Canadians, a little bit of weight loss will not be enough to rebalance their system towards optimum health.

PRACTISING IN ST. JOHN’S

 

STACEY GRANT
McInnes Cooper    

Pros:
• The bar in St. John’s is relatively small and collegial. As a result, lawyers encounter each other much more frequently than in larger cities. This allows lawyers to be more social with each other, and often lends to more agreeable professional relationships and less confrontation on files.

In the cutting edge Canadian health biotechnology industry, research and development can hopefully make the transition to marketable product, bringing new challenges for everyone involved, including corporate counsel.

The work done by in-house counsel to support practitioners within the health-care industry can often mimic the emergency room in terms of triaging and determining priorities. Life as an in-house counsel in the health-care industry is fast paced and there’s never a shortage of interesting issues that pop up in any given day. 

Field Law traces its roots back to 1915, making it one of the oldest law firms in Alberta. With 85 lawyers and offices in Calgary, Edmonton, and Yellowknife, it has emerged as one of the province’s top regional law firms, with a heavy emphasis on servicing the insurance and health-care industry. Long-time managing partner Bob Teskey talks about the challenges of building a regional law firm in one of Canada’s hottest economies.

With billions of dollars invested researching and marketing a successful drug, brand-name drug manufacturers are taking a hard-line approach to litigation. The question now facing the industry is whether recent changes to federal regulations involving patents and drugs will bring a truce to the sector or take the fight to a new level.

From coast to coast, tobacco companies are facing massive lawsuits to recoup smoking-related government healthcare costs. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are the latest provinces to flex their legal muscle.