Beneath the Law

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the expert a court relies on outsources their expertise to a chatbot?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele examine the growing role of artificial intelligence in expert evidence.  They look at the Houston explosion case Lake v. 3M, where an expert conceded that most of his report was AI-generated, and at a condominium tribunal decision that gave an AI opinion no weigh...

Send us Fan Mail Can fifty percent plus one break up a country?  This episode tackles the most existential question in Canadian law as Albertans vote on whether to begin the legal process toward a binding referendum on separation.  Hosts Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele examine the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark 1998 Reference re Secession of Quebec, the clarity requirement, and the duty to...

Send us Fan Mail Is there a constitutional right to a bike lane, and who gets to decide?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele analyze Cycle Toronto v. Ontario, the landmark Ontario Court of Appeal decision that overturned a lower court ruling blocking the removal of Toronto's Bloor, Yonge, and University bike lanes.  Writing for a unanimous panel, Justice Grant Huscroft held that section 7 of the...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a jury is offered only two verdicts and neither one fits?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele step outside their usual lane to examine the hung jury that ended the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three young children.  After five weeks of evidence and seven days of deliberation in Plymouth County Superior Court, eleve...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a lawyer's greatest mistake is not submitting fabricated cases to a court…but lying about it afterward?  This episode confronts Canada's first Law Society of Ontario disciplinary decision arising from the misuse of artificial intelligence: a landmark case in which a thirty-year practitioner used ChatGPT to produce a factum, submitted citations for cases...

Send us Fan Mail When does protecting the public justify reaching into an employee's private life?  This episode takes on one of the most contentious labour and privacy law battles in recent Toronto history: the Toronto Transit Commission's random drug testing policy and the sweeping arbitration decision that struck it down .  Hosts Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele unpack a case nearly two...

Send us Fan Mail When a family breaks down, who gets the cat?  That deceptively simple question drove four to five days of Superior Court litigation in Ontario…all funded by Canadian taxpayers, in what hosts Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele call one of the most revealing windows into the mounting crisis of judicial resource allocation in Canada.  This episode dives into the Ontario family law case o...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the legal profession's newest tool collides with its oldest duty…the duty not to mislead?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele dissect Mazaheri v Law Society of Ontario, 2026 ONLSTH 112, the first case in which "hallucinated" AI-generated authorities were placed before the Law Society Tribunal.  A suspended Ontario lawyer, fighting to regain his licence...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the most powerful politician on earth picks up the phone to dispute a referee's call? Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele step away from Canadian courtrooms and onto the World Cup pitch, examining FIFA's controversial reversal of a red card suspension following a phone call from U.S. President Donald Trump to FIFA president Gianni Infantino.  What begins as...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a machine built to predict the next plausible word starts drafting the arguments lawyers put before a judge?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele dig into a landmark cautionary tale for the Canadian legal system: the UK High Court's rebuke of international firm Pinsent Masons in Cork & Anor v Smith , where a junior lawyer's 59-page AI chat produced a fab...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the law recognizes a form of abuse that leaves no visible bruises?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele examine a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision that officially recognizes intimate partner violence as a new tort.  The discussion explores how coercive control, psychological domination, financial manipulation, and long-term patterns of abusive behaviour can n...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when governments start chasing anonymous online critics?   Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele dive into the controversial use of administrative subpoenas by the US Department of Homeland Security to identify anonymous social media users critical of the Trump administration.  The discussion explores the tension between freedom of speech, anonymity, national security, and g...

Send us Fan Mail When judges become social engineers, democracy starts to wobble. Gavin and Stephen examine the Waterloo homeless encampment decision as a major example of courts moving beyond traditional Charter review and into the realm of public policy design.  What began as a dispute over a municipal bylaw and a public parking lot becomes, in their view, a much larger warning about judicially...

Send us Fan Mail The robot wrote the brief, but the lawyer pays the price. AI can draft a legal brief in seconds, but it can also torch a lawyer’s reputation just as fast.  Gavin and Stephen take on the legal profession’s uneasy embrace of generative AI and the very real fallout from fake cases, invented quotations, and AI-drafted arguments making their way into court filings.  What starts as a co...

Send us Fan Mail One fake MBA. One real lawsuit. One unforgettable lesson.  In this episode Gavin and Stephen dig into the Alberta employment case Tutor v. Accurate Screen Limited , where a senior business-development employee allegedly misrepresented his academic credentials, was fired for cause, found another job within months, and still sued for wrongful dismissal.   They unpack why honesty is...

Send us Fan Mail A hidden camera, a secret recording, and a courtroom showdown.  Stephen Thiele and Gavin Tighe unpack a shocking case where a surreptitious sex tape made its way into a family law proceeding, raising serious legal and ethical questions.  What begins as an acrimonious separation quickly escalates into a debate about privacy, voyeurism, and the limits of legal protection under the d...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a technology designed to serve humanity becomes complicit in its destruction?  This episode confronts one of the most unsettling legal frontiers of our time: the intersection of artificial intelligence, tort liability, and the duty to warn.  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele examine the horrific mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia where a shooter who ha...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a government turns its most powerful emergency legislation against its own citizens for honking horns?  This episode examines one of the most consequential constitutional rulings in recent Canadian legal history: the Federal Court of Appeal's decision finding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act against the 2022 Freedom...

Send us Fan Mail Is social media the new Big Tobacco or is it simply the price of living in a hyper connected world?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele dive into the mounting legal and societal backlash against social media giants like Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat, exploring whether these platforms are fueling a youth mental health crisis—and if governments and courts can do anything about it.  From Au...

Send us Fan Mail Can a single oath determine who gets to practise law in Canada?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele unpack a fascinating Alberta Court of Appeal decision that struck down a mandatory oath of allegiance for lawyers as unconstitutional.  Through the case of Amarjeet Singh Dhariwal, a Canadian born Sikh lawyer who refused to swear allegiance to the Crown on religious grounds, the discuss...

Send us Fan Mail Did Trump just rewrite the rules of international law by capturing Nicolás Maduro?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele unpack the shocking U.S. operation that saw the arrest of Venezuela’s controversial leader…without war, without permission, and without apology.  Was it a bold act of justice or a dangerous display of unchecked power?   Gavin and Stephen break down the legal, politica...

Send us Fan Mail This episode helped Gardiner Roberts win a Mondaq Thought Leadership Award in Spring 2026. What happens when a hockey hit crosses the line from rough play to criminal assault? Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele unpack the legal chaos surrounding violence in hockey, sparked by a shocking stick attack in a recent Ontario Hockey League (OHL) game.  The lawyers break down when on-ice acti...

Send us Fan Mail If becoming a lawyer no longer requires proving what you know, what does the profession really stand for?   Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele take on the Law Society of Ontario’s proposal to scrap bar exams in favor of a training course, arguing that removing substantive testing undermines both public protection and the meaning of being called to the bar.  Drawing on their own experi...

Send us Fan Mail Who owns your voice once it's out there?  Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele dive headfirst into the legal grey zone of podcasting, exposing the tangled web of copyright, guest rights, AI risks, and international enforcement.  In a world where anyone with a mic and Wi-Fi can become a broadcaster, the legal framework hasn’t caught up…and that’s a problem.  From defamation and mora...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when one vote decides an election and that vote never makes it to the ballot box?  Gavin and Stephen dive deep into a razor-thin electoral result in Terrebonne, Quebec, where a federal seat was won by a single vote.  But here's the twist: a mail-in ballot that could have tied the race was rejected due to a postal code error, an error made not by the voter, but by...