I am continuing, with these jotting, a sporadic tradition of offering up some commentary on the legal year just past.
To my mind, one of the biggest legal events of 2019 was the maturing of the Civil Resolution Tribunal into a court with actual teeth, as our Attorney General stuck his toe into constitutional waters, Continue reading “2019 The legal year that was”
When I was a tadpole, Trigger was simply the name of a famous horse, and not an inflammatory verb, but my, how things have changed!
Roy Rogers’ faithful steed Trigger died in 1965 and a scant few years later I stumbled through the doors of Osgoode Hall Law School to begin my legal education. Continue reading “Trigger!”
Since the Attorney General seems determined to create a species of half-trained lawyers and to have them regulated by the Law Society perhaps we ought to examine some of the mechanics of how that might work. Continue reading “Justice Delayed”
There is an old saying that managing lawyers is just like herding cats: neither likes being managed, herded or told what to do, as the Law Society of BC and the Attorney General discovered last week at the Society’s Annual General meeting, where the lawyers, hissing and scratching all the way, torpedoed the AG’s latest pet project. Continue reading “Herding Cats”
Mankind has always had an ambivalent relationship with disruptive technology. Inventive by nature we are constantly coming up with breakthrough ideas then slamming on the brakes out of fear that new technologies may need casualties in their wake.
The first red flag act was passed in the UK in 1865- to deal with the peril of self propelled vehicles or “horseless carriages” as they were sometimes known. Similar legislation was passed in several US states in the 1890s- they were called “red flag” acts, because they required horseless carriages to be accompanied by a flag person waving a red flag to warn others of their approach.
The newest red flag act was introduced by the BC government this month in the form of the Passenger Transportation Amendment Act– also known as the “Nobble Uber At All Costs Act”. It is a classic Luddite reaction to the emergence of disruptive technology. The legislation seeks to eliminate all of the unique attributes of ride sharing, such as the ability to tap into casual part-time drivers, and the use of dynamic pricing, and tries to force ride sharing into the old-fashioned taxi business model.
Just as the governments of the day had no success forcing horseless carriages to throttle back to the speed of the horse-drawn carriages they were replacing, I predict that the BC government will not be able to continue to bind the hands of the ride sharing movement for much longer. Frankly, it is an embarrassment that they are attempting to do so.
Langley Law 