Background
In 1969 the Federal government passed the Freshwater Fish Marketing Act, granting the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, a federal agency, a monopoly on the export of fish from Manitoba as well as other participating provinces. The Crown corporation was authorized to issue licenses to private firms, but did not do so in Manitoba.
Under the terms of an agreement between the Government of Manitoba and the Government of Canada, the Province and the Federal government would compensate those affected "for any such plant or equipment that will or may be rendered redundant by reason of any operations authorized to be carried out by the Corporation under the Act."
Manitoba Fisheries Ltd. was one of several private commercial distributors who were put out of business by the legislation, and brought an action against the federal government for compensation of their loss of business suffered as a result of the Act.
Reasons of the court
The court developed a two-part test to determine whether there has been a regulatory taking: first, what the claimant has lost must be "property" in the context of the legislative scheme, and second, the property must have been acquired by the government.
It was held that the legislation rendered the appellant's physical assets "virtually useless" and that the goodwill built up by the business was as much a part of its business assets as its physical property:
- [T]he Freshwater Fish Marketing Act and the Corporation created thereunder had the effect of depriving the appellant of its goodwill as a going concern and consequently rendering its physical assets virtually useless and that the goodwill so taken away constitutes property of the appellant for the loss of which no compensation whatever has been paid.
The court then applied the common law rule from Attorney General v De Keyser's Royal Hotel Ltd , [1920] AC 508, that "unless the words of the statute clearly so demand, a statute is not to be construed so as to take away the property of a subject without compensation", finding that the appellants were entitled to full compensation "in an amount equal to the fair market value of its business as a going concern as at May 1, 1969, minus the residual value of its remaining assets as of that date".
Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings, has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons. In most countries, corporations, as legal persons, have a right to enter into contracts with other parties and to sue or be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons.
In United States constitutional law, a regulatory taking occurs when governmental regulations limit the use of private property to such a degree that the landowner is effectively deprived of all economically reasonable use or value of their property. Under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution governments are required to pay just compensation for such takings. The amendment is incorporated to the states via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Eminent domain, land acquisition, compulsory purchase/acquisition, resumption, resumption/compulsory acquisition, or expropriation is the power of a state, provincial, or national government to take private property for public use. It does not include the power to take and transfer ownership of private property from one property owner to another private property owner without a valid public purpose. This power can be legislatively delegated by the state to municipalities, government subdivisions, or even to private persons or corporations, when they are authorized by the legislature to exercise the functions of public character.
Canadian federalism involves the current nature and historical development of the federal system in Canada.
The Canadian Wheat Board was a marketing board for wheat and barley in Western Canada. Established by the Parliament of Canada on 5 July 1935, its operation was governed by the Canadian Wheat Board Act as a mandatory producer marketing system for wheat and barley in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and a small part of British Columbia. It was illegal for any farmer in areas under the CWB's jurisdiction to sell their wheat and barley through any other channel than the CWB. Although often called a monopoly, it was actually a monopsony since it was the only buyer of wheat and barley. It was a marketing agency acting on behalf of Western Canadian farmers, passing all profits from its operation back to farmers. Its market power over wheat and barley marketing was referred to as the "Single Desk".
Alvin "Al" Mackling is a longtime Canadian Democratic Socialist and a retired lawyer. He was an alderman in the former city of St. James from 1961 to 1969 and was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1969 to 1973 and from 1981 to 1988. He was a cabinet minister in the New Democratic Party governments of Edward Schreyer and Howard Pawley.
R v Sparrow, [1990] 1 S.C.R. 1075 was an important decision of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning the application of Aboriginal rights under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Court held that Aboriginal rights, such as fishing, that were in existence in 1982 are protected under the Constitution of Canada cannot be infringed without justification on account of the government's fiduciary duty to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.
Section 91(2) of the Constitution Act, 1867, also known as the trade and commerce power, grants the Parliament of Canada the authority to legislate on:
2. The Regulation of Trade and Commerce.
The act-of-state doctrine or foreign act of state doctrine is a principle in English and United States law which states that every sovereign state is bound to respect the independence of every other sovereign state, and the courts will not sit in judgment of another government's acts or act of any sovereign national done within its own territory.
Crown corporations in Canada are government organizations with a mixture of commercial and public-policy objectives. They are directly and wholly owned by the Crown.
Surrogatum is a thing put in the place of another or a substitute. The Surrogatum Principle pertains to a Canadian income tax principle involving a person who suffers harm caused by another and may seek compensation for (a) loss of income, (b) expenses incurred, (c) property destroyed, or (d) personal injury, as well as punitive damages, under the surrogatum principle, the tax consequences of a damage or settlement payment depend on the tax treatment of the item for which the payment is intended to substitute.
Benj. Franklin Savings and Loan was a thrift based in Portland, in the U.S. state of Oregon. Founded in 1925, the company was seized by the United States Government in 1990. In 1996 the United States Supreme Court found that this and similar seizures were based on an unconstitutional provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA). Shareholders of the thrift sued the federal government for damages caused by the seizure, with the shareholders winning several rounds in the courts. In 2013, $9.5 million was allocated for disbursement to shareholders.
United States v. Riverside Bayview, 474 U.S. 121 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case challenging the scope of federal regulatory powers over waterways as pertaining to the definition of "waters of the United States" as written in the Clean Water Act of 1972. The Court ruled unanimously that the government does have the power to control intrastate wetlands as waters of the United States. This ruling was effectively revised in Rapanos v. United States (2006), in which the Court adopted a very narrow interpretation of "navigable waters."
In Canada, passing off is both a common law tort and a statutory cause of action under the Canadian Trade-marks Act referring to the deceptive representation or marketing of goods or services by competitors in a manner that confuses consumers. The law of passing off protects the goodwill of businesses by preventing competitors from passing off their goods as those of another.
Canada v GlaxoSmithKline Inc is the first ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada that deals with issues involving transfer pricing and how they are treated under the Income Tax Act of Canada ("ITA").
Newfoundland and Labrador v AbitibiBowater Inc, 2012 SCC 67 is a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada dealing with whether an obligation incurred under regulatory action constitutes a claim under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, thus becoming subject to a stay of proceedings.
Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd v Canada is a significant case of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning the application of Canadian income tax law, as well as the purposive interpretation of statutes.
Grape Bay Ltd v Attorney-General of Bermuda [1999] UKPC 43 is a case concerning expressly analogous principles to compulsory purchase by the Privy Council and is important for English land law. It directly concerns a state prohibition which impacts on a development, by agreement but not in any substantive physical works, underway. It held that an Act passed by the Bermuda legislature to prevent foreign corporation restaurants opening did not amount to a "regulatory taking" or an unconstitutional deprivation of property without compensation. In doing so, Lord Hoffmann distinguished infringement of "liberty" and an infringement of "property" in a manner similar to Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld's classic analysis.
Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 569 U.S. 513 (2013); 576 U.S. 350, 135 S. Ct. 2419 (2015), were a pair of United States Supreme Court cases in which the Court established that the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to personal property. The cases arose out of a dispute involving the National Raisin Reserve, when a farmer challenged a rule that required farmers to keep a portion of their crops off the market. In Horne I the Court held that the plaintiff had standing to sue for violation of the United States Constitution’s takings clause. In Horne II the Court held that the National Raisin Reserve was an unconstitutional violation of the takings clause.
