The Canadian Law of Obligations: Private Law for the 21st Century and Beyond

"Overall, this is an excellent book for tort practitioners who want to explore where their practice can go, or tort scholars teaching upper-year, or even introductory, torts courses who want their students to read and analyze well-written articles about current tort ideas and concepts."

Reviewed by John K. Lefurgey, Partner
Martens Lingard LLP

See Review in 2019 Canadian Law Library Review 44:2 (pages 14-15)

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The book is first in The Canadian Law of Obligations series along with The Canadian Law of Obligations: Access to Justice (2020).

This collection includes 12 papers developed out of a conference held in 2017 ("The Canadian Law of Obligations: Innovations, Innovators and the Next 20 Years") together with a Foreword by The Honourable Justice Russell Brown. The papers included in this collection examine emerging issues, themes, and controversies within the Canadian Law of Obligations and provide diverse perspectives about a range of subjects including the limits and potential development of public authority liability, affirmative duties and omissions, the role of rights in private law, the protection of privacy, good faith, and causation in contract and tort. The collected papers revisit seminal cases together with recent legal developments, and explore the potential for new approaches to old problems.

This volume is dedicated to the late Justice Allen Linden, Q.C.

Features

• Unique subject matter - helps civil litigators develop new perspectives on key issues in private law, develop innovative civil litigation strategies and formulate corresponding arguments
• Expert insights - from leading tort law practitioners and scholars, including current Supreme Court of Canada Justice Russell Brown, Prof. Joost Blom, Prof. Bruce Feldthusen and Prof. Lewis Klar
• Concise overview of key areas of tort law - including duty of care, causation, negligence, privacy, good faith and public authority liability

The Collection of Papers

1. Foreword – Justice Russell Brown

PART I - THE PRIVATE LAW RESPONSE TO PUBLIC WRONGS: PUBLIC AUTHORITY LIABILITY

2. Establishing Proximity in the Context of Public Authority Liability - Prof. Lewis Klar
3. Bungled Police Emergency Calls and the Problems with Unique Public Duties of Care - Prof. Bruce Feldthusen
4. False Imprisonment in the Administrative Segregation Context - Prof. Efrat Arbel
5. Systemic Wrongdoing and the Liability of Public Authorities in Tort Law: Two Case Studies - Prof. Margaret I. Hall & Aliya Chouinard, JD

PART II - AFFIRMATIVE DUTIES AND LIABILITY FOR OMISSION

6. Explaining Canada's Penchant for Affirmative Duties of Care - Prof. Erika Chamberlain
7. Negligence Liability for Police Omissions in Canada: A Golden Mean? - Prof. Alistair Price

PART III - SITUATING RIGHTS IN PRIVATE LAW: TWO PERSPECTIVES

8. Rights and Tort Law: Respecting Children's Decisional Autonomy for Medical Interventions - Prof. Elizabeth Adjin –Tettey
9. Disabusing the Common Law of "Abuse of Rights" - Prof. Bruce Pardy

PART III - PROTECTING PRIVACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

10. Don't Tell Me What the Papers Say: Privacy Injunctions in the Internet Age - Samuel Beswick, JD & William Fotherby
11. Canada's Statutory Privacy Torts in Commonwealth Perspective - Prof. Chris Hunt

PART IV - CAUSATION

12. Causation in Contract and Tort - Prof. Joost Blom

PART V - ISSUES IN CONTRACT: GOOD FAITH

13. Canada's New Good Faith: Between Public and Private - John Enman-Beech, JD

Add This to Your Library

• Civil Litigators –assist in developing new perspectives on key issues in private law, developing innovative civil litigation strategies and formulating corresponding arguments
• Judges – provides new perspectives on key issues in private law in relation to current legal issues
• Academia – assist research in the areas discussed, provide a source of course readings and basis for class discussion
• Law Libraries – a useful reference for anyone researching in the area of torts and contracts

The Canadian Law of Obligations: Private Law for the 21st Century and Beyond is a collection of papers developed out of the Supreme Court Law Review.