Strategic lawsuits against public participation, or strategic litigation against public participation, are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.
Forum shopping is a colloquial term for the practice of litigants having their legal case heard in the court thought most likely to provide a favorable judgment. Some jurisdictions have, for example, become known as "plaintiff-friendly" and so have attracted litigation even when there is little or no connection between the legal issues and the jurisdiction in which they are to be litigated.
Forum non conveniens (FNC) is a mostly common law legal doctrine through which a court acknowledges that another forum or court where the case might have been brought is a more appropriate venue for a legal case, and transfers the case to such a forum. A change of venue might be ordered, for example, to transfer a case to a jurisdiction within which an accident or incident underlying the litigation occurred and where all the witnesses reside.
In contract law, a forum selection clause in a contract with a conflict of laws element allows the parties to agree that any disputes relating to that contract will be resolved in a specific forum. They usually operate in conjunction with a choice of law clause which determines the proper law of the relevant contract.
Chamberlain v Surrey School District No 36, [2002] 4 S.C.R. 710, 2002 SCC 86, was a case in which the Supreme Court of Canada held that a local school board could not impose its religious values by refusing to permit the use of books that sought to promote tolerance of same-sex relationships.
Delgamuukw v British Columbia, [1997] 3 SCR 1010, also known as Delgamuukw v The Queen, Delgamuukw-Gisday’wa, or simply Delgamuukw, is a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that contains its first comprehensive account of Aboriginal title in Canada. The Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en peoples claimed Aboriginal title and jurisdiction over 58,000 square kilometers in northwest British Columbia. The plaintiffs lost the case at trial, but the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal in part and ordered a new trial because of deficiencies relating to the pleadings and treatment of evidence. In this decision, the Court went on to describe the "nature and scope" of the protection given to Aboriginal title under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, defined how a claimant can prove Aboriginal title, and clarified how the justification test from R v Sparrow applies when Aboriginal title is infringed. The decision is also important for its treatment of oral testimony as evidence of historic occupation.
William Ian Corneil Binnie is a former puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, serving from January 8, 1998 to October 27, 2011. Of the justices appointed to the Supreme Court in recent years, he is one of the few appointed directly from private practice. On his retirement from the Court, he was described by The Globe and Mail as "arguably the country's premier judge", by La Presse as "probably the most influential judge in Canada of the last decade" and by the Toronto Star as “one of the strongest hands on the court.”
British Columbia v Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd, [2005] 2 S.C.R. 473, 2005 SCC 49, is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where the Court found that the provincial Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, which allowed the government to sue tobacco companies, was constitutionally valid. Imperial Tobacco Canada is an indirect subsidiary of British American Tobacco.
Beals v Saldanha, [2003] 3 S.C.R. 416, 2003 SCC 72 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the conflict of laws, where the Court established the requirements to enforce foreign judgments in Canada. The Court held that foreign judgments were enforceable in Canada where there was a "real and substantial connection" between the foreign jurisdiction and the subject matter giving rise to the claim.
Hunt v T&N plc, [1993] 4 S.C.R. 289 is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on conflict of laws. The Court ruled that the Quebec law prohibiting the removal of company documents from the province was constitutionally inapplicable to a British Columbia court order. The decision was significant in that it affirmed much of the reasoning from Morguard Investments Ltd. v. De Savoye (1990) and further held that the principles first identified in Morguard are fundamental to the constitution.
The Spiliada or Spiliada Maritime Corp v Cansulex Ltd[1986] UKHL 10, [1987] AC 460 is a leading decision of the House of Lords on the doctrine of forum non conveniens. It has been described as the "seminal case" on jurisdictional issues.
Club Resorts Ltd v Van Breda, 2012 SCC 17, is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada that has brought greater certainty to the question of a real and substantial connection in the assumption of civil jurisdiction by Canadian courts in matters concerning the conflict of laws.
Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, Inc., 537 U.S. 418 (2003), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States holding that, under the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, a claim of trademark dilution requires proof of actual dilution, not merely a likelihood of dilution. This decision was later superseded by the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 (TDRA).
Chick Kam Choo v. Exxon Corp., 486 U.S. 140 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a federal court's dismissal of a civil action on the ground that it should be heard in a foreign court, under the doctrine of forum non conveniens, does not preclude the plaintiff from filing the same action in a state court that applies different forum non conveniens rules.
Marine Services International Ltd v Ryan Estate, 2013 SCC 44 is a leading case of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning the coexistence of Canadian maritime law with provincial jurisdiction over property and civil rights, and it marks a further restriction upon the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity in Canadian constitutional jurisprudence.
Carter v Canada (AG), 2015 SCC 5 is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision where the prohibition of assisted suicide was challenged as contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ("Charter") by several parties, including the family of Kay Carter, a woman suffering from degenerative spinal stenosis, and Gloria Taylor, a woman suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ("ALS"). In a unanimous decision on February 6, 2015, the Court struck down the provision in the Criminal Code, thereby giving Canadian adults who are mentally competent and suffering intolerably and enduringly the right to a doctor's assistance in dying. This ruling overturned the Supreme Court's 1993 ruling in Rodriguez v British Columbia (AG), which had denied a right to assisted suicide.
NIL/TU,O Child and Family Services Society v BC Government and Service Employees' Union is a leading Supreme Court of Canada constitutional law case dealing with jurisdiction over labour relations in the context of federalism and Aboriginal rights.
Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale v Lee Kui Jak[1987] UKPC 12, [1987] AC 871 is a judicial decision of Privy Council on appeal from Brunei which was for many years, and arguably still is, the leading authority in relation to anti-suit injunctions under the English common law.
Google Inc v Equustek Solutions Inc was a 2017 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada dealing with the authority to issue injunctions against foreign companies.
Nevsun Resources Ltd v Araya, 2020 SCC 5 is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of Canada held, in a 5–4 decision, that a private corporation may be liable under Canadian law for breaches of customary international law committed in other countries.
