BARE BONES BRIEFS | FCA: The West Bank is not Israel | OSC blasts law firms' lack of cooperation in LTC class actions | BLG buys AUM Law | Condemned? Choose your poison in South Carolina | Can't-miss: McMillan webinar

By Julius Melnitzer | May 7, 2021

FCA : West Bank wine is not necessarily “Product of Israel”

The Federal Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court ruling that “Product of Israel” labels on wines produced in the West Bank were “false, misleading and deceptive”. The court remitted the matter back to the Complaints and Appeals Office of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which had concluded that the labels complied with the applicable legislation. As the FCA saw it, the Agency had failed to demonstrate that its interpretation of the legislation was consistent with its text, context and purpose.

Plaintiffs firms’ refusal to work together on LTC class action “escape” OSC’s “understanding”

Justice Edward Belobaba has granted carriage of a $500 million class action stemming from COVID-19 outbreaks at Ontario long-term care homes to a consortium headed by Toronto’s Rochon Geneva LLP. He concluded that Rochon’s approach – a “more conventional” action that anticipated Ontario issuing third-party claims against LTC operators – was preferable to Koskie Minsky LLP’s “Taylorized” perspective, which sued Ontario only for that portion of fault that could be attributed to the government.

But Belobaba left open the question whether the class would be best served by the decision he was forced to make:

I must confess that I come to this decision with some regret. KM’s class action
group has impressive experience litigating Crown immunity issues and the related
procedural hurdles that the action against Ontario will encounter. It would obviously have
been in the class members’ best interests if the KM and RGC legal groups could have
agreed to work together. Alas, for reasons that escape my understanding, no such
agreement was achieved.

Conclusion: justice doesn’t always work in litigants’ best interests.

BLG acquires AUM, boosts asset management sector profile

Borden Ladner Gervais LLP has purchased AUM Law Professional Corporation, a Canadian law firm that provides regulatory compliance services to the asset management sector. BLG will bring AUM’s alternative legal services model to registrant clients in its investment management group, the largest practice group focusing exclusively on the investment management industry in Canada.

“BLG’s investment in AUM Law will allow the firm to expand and automate its regulatory compliance services to clients across Canada as part of the BLG Beyond portfolio of alternative legal services”, the firm said in a press release.

South Carolina death row inmates must choose between firing squad and electric chair

Here’s a new twist on supply-chain management: the DailyMail.com reports that a shortage of lethal-injection drugs has impeded South Carolina’s ability to kill people. So condemned convicts will have to choose between a firing squad and the electric chair. There are 37 inmates on the state’s death row. No word yet on what happens if one of them refuses to choose.

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Julius Melnitzer is a Toronto-based legal affairs writer, ghostwriter, writing coach and media trainer. Readers can reach him at [email protected] or https://legalwriter.net/contact.