Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Budway, a Vancouver marijuana store, has been using a logo similar to the Subway sandwich logo. Budway also had a mascot in the form of a submarine sandwich filled with cannabis leaves, with bloodshot, half-open eyes.  Subway sued Budway, alleging various breaches of the Trademarks Act .  One of the issues in the case was whether what Budway was...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: The BC Supreme Court has inherent jurisdiction to control its own process. This includes the authority to find people who breach court orders to be in contempt. The purpose of this is to uphold the rule of law.  The rule of law requires people to comply with court orders, even if they don’t agree with them. If people were permitted to decide whi...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Annaca Kobayashi, a 19-year-old woman from Langford, falsely reported to the police that a young man she knows had threatened her with a knife and sexually assaulted her.  A police investigation, including a review of a video recording where she claimed to have been threatened with the knife, revealed her story to be false.  Only after a third p...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Duress is a defence, sometimes referred to as an excuse, for the commission of a criminal offence.  The rationale for the defence is the idea of moral involuntariness.  These are the requirements for the defence: There must be an explicit or implicit threat of present or future death or bodily harm. The threat can be directed at the accused or a...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Acts have, perhaps, the least exciting names imaginable.  Sometimes, however, these acts bundle together legal changes that can be significant.  If passes in BC, a recently introduced Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act will make changes that will have meaningful consequences for people.  On the show, two of the...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Many criminal cases are resolved by way of joint sentencing submissions by Crown and defence counsel.  This means that the accused person is agreeing to plead guilty and both lawyers have agreed on what the appropriate sentence should be.  The Supreme Court of Canada has held that, in these circumstances, judges are not permitted to impose a sen...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: The BC Government has proposed police roadblocks to enforce travel restrictions between health authorities, in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Because there are significantly different rates of infection in different parts of the province, this objective is understandable.  Unfortunately, contrary to the premier’s assertion that police w...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: The USA and Canada have a treaty that provides for mutual legal assistance in the investigation of criminal matters.  Pursuant to this treaty, the Minister of Justice of Canada, at the request of the USA, applied for and obtained a search warrant for two Vancouver companies being investigated for sending fraudulent mass-mailed solicitations that...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: In August of 2015, Mr. Upton was attempting to straighten a bent metal plate from the steering mechanism of his 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air. He had removed it from the vehicle, placed it on a concrete step in his backyard, and was hitting it with a sledgehammer. Mr. Sexsmith was visiting Mr. Upton and watching his car repair efforts. Unfortunately, o...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Land title fraud can result in the loss of your home.  Efforts to fraudulently impersonate property owners have increased along with the use of remote transactions.  With property, other than real estate, if someone steals something and then sells it to an innocent third party, the original owner of the property stills owns it. The legal concept...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: In 2003 there was a coastal forestry worker strike in BC. It involved thousands of employees and multiple unions. After three weeks the strike was eventually ended by back-to-work legislation.  One of the impacted union locals, led by Sonny Ghag, was not happy about this. Mr. Singh organized the storming of a sawmill owned by Mainland Sawmills L...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Mr. Eisler was born in 1932. He left school at age 14 and started work as a farmer and shepherd. By age 18 he was working in the Alberta oil fields. By 22 he was a field supervisor and by age 31 he had started his first company.  At age 79 Mr. Eisler was fired by the board of directors of a mining company he started and had worked at for twenty-...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: The Douglas Lake Cattle Company is the largest cattle range in Canada. It is owned by US billionaire Stan Kroenke, who also owns the Colorado Avalanche and the Denver Nuggets, amongst other things. The ranch is so large it completely surrounds two lakes that belong to the Province of BC. For years Mr. Kroenke has been trying to stop people, incl...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: To ensure their independence, Superior Court Judges hold office on good behavior, until age 75, and can only be removed by the Governor General on address of the Senate and House of Commons.  The point of this is that you don’t want judges to be fired when they made decisions that the government doesn’t like. If you have a dispute with the gover...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Several churches in the Fraser Valley have been refusing to comply with COVID-19 health rules and have been conducting in-person services.  The churches have started a legal challenge to the public health orders on the basis that they believe them to be unconstitutional given constitutional protection for “freedom of conscience and religion”. Th...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: What happens when someone, repeatedly, pretends to be a medical doctor, despite repeated injunctions and fines being imposed? They go to jail.  The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia is responsible for bringing applications to the BC Supreme Court to stop someone who is not qualified from using titles like “Dr.” or “Physician...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: In 1999 the Supreme Court of Canada, in a case called Gladue, set out principles to be considered when indigenous people are involved in the criminal justice system. Judges were directed to consider all available sanctions other than imprisonment and to pay particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders.  Despite the admonishm...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Google has agreed to settle a Canadian Class Action based on an alleged breach of privacy arising from the collection and transmission of Android smartphone data. The data in question consists of the identification number or code of the cell towers used to connect Android phones.  The Cell ID Data would identify the Android phone by unit serial...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: A BC Supreme Court Judge describes the BC COVID-19 public health orders as “fraught with inconsistency and ambiguity” and that it’s “not surprising that reasonable people can reasonably disagree about their interpretation and application in any given circumstance.” This case is one of many that have arisen where separated parents disagree about...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: The Supreme Court of Canada has granted the Crown leave to appeal a BC Supreme Court decision that found a new law that required people accused of various sexual offences to provide advance notice of records they wish to rely on to the complaint and Crown to be unconstitutional.  The law in question was passed following the Jian Ghomeshi case wh...

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan: Provisions of the British Columbia Public Health Act allow for the enforcement of public health orders by means other than the imposition of fines.  If someone is refusing to comply with an order to remain in quarantine or isolation, a judge can issue a warrant for their arrest and to require that they remain detained in a location and on condit...

Rather than using collection agencies to collect COVID-19 related fines, the province of BC shouldn’t be sending $1,000 COVID-19 benefits to people who have outstanding fines for breaching orders of the Provincial Health Officer.  As the payment are gratuitous, they could simply be withheld to pay outstanding fines for breaching orders made pursuant to the Public Health Act .  The idea that someon...

Renowned constitutional lawyer Joe Arvay passed away unexpectedly at the age of 71. Over the course of a remarkable career focused on public interest constitutional litigation he had a profound impact on the lives of many people.  A few of the many cases he was involved with are discussed on the show, ranging from the Little Sisters bookstore case, that dealt with freedom of expression and equalit...

Mr. Big investigations involve tricking a suspect into believing they are being recruited into a fictitious criminal organization. Often a large number of undercover RCMP officers are involved. Typically, the undercover police officers will spend months having the suspect perform tasks for the fictitious criminal organization, paying them to do so. Eventually, the suspect will be introduced to the...

The Douglas Lake Ranch is the largest private landholding in British Columbia. It’s owned by Stan Kroenke, a US billionaire who also owns the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche and the NFL’s L.A. Rams.  The ranch has been involved in a legal dispute for years attempting to stop people from using a road the runs through the ranch, and two lakes that are surrounded by ranch property but owned by the Province...