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Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries, 2025 ed
No full textThe first edition of this casebook was published in July 2021. Updates were published in July 2022, February 2023, August 2023, May 2024 and July 2025.
Preface
The law of obligations concerns the legal rights and duties owed between people. Three primary categories make up the common law of obligations: tort, contract, and unjust enrichment. This casebook provides an introduction to tort law: the law that recognises and responds to civil wrongdoing. The material is arranged in two main parts. Following a brief introduction (§1), the first main part addresses intentional, dignitary and dishonesty torts as well as corresponding defences and remedies (§2-§10). The focus pivots with a consideration of the overarching theories and goals of tort law (§11) and no-fault compensation schemes as an alternative to the tort system (§12). The second main part addresses negligence, nuisance, strict liability, and further defences and remedial doctrines (§13-§23). The casebook concludes with two chapters that explore the place of common law tort within our broader legal systems (§24-§25).
This casebook was compiled and edited by Assistant Professor Samuel Beswick of the University of British Columbia Peter A. Allard School of Law. Maddison Zapach (J.D. 2023) assisted on the first edition published in July 2021. We gratefully acknowledge the influence on our approach to this subject of Professor Joost Blom QC of the Allard School of Law, Professor John C.P. Goldberg of Harvard Law School, and Associate Professor Rosemary Tobin of the University of Auckland Faculty of Law. The support of Open UBC and the UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund is also gratefully acknowledged.
Gabriella Pasolli (J.D. 2025), Lillian Callender (J.D. 2025), Joey He (J.D. expected 2026) and Malik Dhami (J.D. expected 2026) assisted on the 2024 edition.
Themes
Themes explored within this casebook include: Tort law is grounded in community standards and values. Rights of action in private law afford plaintiffs the right to sue. Our common law constitution assumes equality of all (including public officials) under law. The common law develops incrementally: precedent upon precedent. The common law is a dialogue taking place over time within and between jurisdictions.
Notable illustrations of these themes include the High Court of Australia’s judgment in Binsaris v. Northern Territory (§2.2.4) recognising incarcerated indigenous youths’ claims of unlawful battery by prison officers; the Supreme Court of Canada’s judgment in R v. Le (§2.4.5) addressing police racial profiling, trespass, and wrongful detention; the opinion dissenting from the Supreme Court of the United States’ denial of certiorari in Baxter v. Bracey (§6.6.8.2) concerning the US doctrine of qualified immunity from constitutional tort liability for government officers; and the Ontario Court of Appeal’s judgment in Cloud v. Canada (§19.7.1) certifying a class action of First Nations residential school survivors’ claims in negligence, battery, and assault.
While primarily focussing on Canadian case law, this casebook incorporates judgments from comparative common law jurisdictions, including Hong Kong, India, Kenya, New Zealand, and Singapore, as well as excerpts of and links to commentaries from the world’s leading tort law scholars.
Teaching and learning from this casebook
This casebook is designed to aid the teaching of tort law in common law Canadian law schools. The readings are complemented by commentary in the UBC Common Law Torts Wiki.
The cases have been selected and curated to help build up understanding of concepts and material over a course. One way this is achieved is by returning to different portions of judgments across topics. For example, the case of Gokey v. Usher & Parsons appears across twelve cross-referenced sections addressing the topics of battery (§2.2.1), assault (§2.3.3), statutory invasion of privacy (§4.2.3), harassment (§5.2.6), trespass to land (§7.1.2), non-pecuniary damages (§9.3.4), aggravated damages (§9.4.3), punitive damages (§9.5.4), permanent injunctions (§9.8.2.1), intimidation (§10.2.1), private nuisance (§21.1.3), and legal costs (§20.8.1). The case of Lu v. Shen appears in the sections on intentional infliction of mental suffering (§3.2.5), invasion of privacy (§4.2.4), defamation (§5.1.1), harassment (§5.2.3), non-pecuniary damages (§9.3.8), and permanent injunctions (§9.8.2.4). Hill v. Hamilton-Wentworth Police Services Board appears in the sections on duty of care (§13.4.2.2), standard of care (§14.1.3.3), breach of duty (§14.2.5.3), damage (§15.2.1), and but-for causation (§16.1.3).
The casebook is designed with flexibility in mind. Each chapter is largely self-contained so that instructors can assign sections to suit their syllabi. The edited cases link back to original judgment transcripts on open-access platforms. Extracts of relevant Federal and British Columbia statutes are accompanied by lists of other provinces’ equivalent statutes.
Dinkuses (“***”) indicate where content has been edited out. To aid classroom discussion, paragraph numbering has been added to case excerpts where it was not already included in the original transcript.
To aid comprehension, each reading is followed by the editor’s Reflection questions. Students will find it helpful to review these questions before reading the case or material that they reflect on, and to read the cases in light of the commentary in the Common Law Torts Wiki. Students can find past exams, multiple-choice quizzes and guided exam answer exercises based on the casebook content by visiting https://blogs.ubc.ca/beswick/torts/.
Readers who wish to delve deeper can follow the links to podcasts , videos , blogs, news, articles, and books on relevant topics that are cited and hyperlinked in the Further material sections.
Instructors may subscribe to a mailing list for edition updates.
Recommended reference reading on Canadian tort law E. Chamberlain, S. Pitel, A. Botterell, M. McInnes, J. Neyers & Z. Sinel, Introduction to the Canadian Law of Torts (4th ed, Toronto: LexisNexis, 2020). E. Chamberlain, S. Pitel, A. Botterell, M. McInnes, J. Neyers & Z. Sinel, Fridman’s The Law of Torts in Canada (4th ed, Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2020). G.H.L. Fridman, Torts: A Guide for the Perplexed (Toronto: LexisNexis, 2017). L. Klar & C. Jefferies, Tort Law (7th ed, Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2023). A. Linden, B. Feldthusen, M. Hall, E. Knutsen & H. Young, Canadian Tort Law (12th ed, Toronto: LexisNexis, 2022). M.H. Kerr, J. Kurtz & L.M. Olivo, Canadian Tort Law in a Nutshell (5th ed, Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2019). P.H. Osborne, The Law of Torts (6th ed, Toronto: Irwin Law, 2020). S. Shields, Is That Legal? Torts, http://www.isthatlegal.ca/index.php?name=Torts.
Recommended reading on succeeding as a first-year law student B. Friedman & J.C.P. Goldberg, Open Book: The Inside Track to Law School Success (2nd ed, New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2016). JD Advising, “A Case Brief Template” (2020) and “An In-Depth Guide to Outlining” (2020).https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/books/1413/thumbnail.jp
On Copyright and Social Policy
Full text linkThis paper advocates for a view of copyright not as economic incentive or reward, but as a critical piece of a broader social policy, the goal of which is to help build a just and inclusive society. Copyright can play an important role in helping build such a society, in that the exclusive rights granted to creators under copyright legislation, as well as the limits placed on those rights, can be structured in ways that help advance this goal. However, copyright alone can only do so much. In seeking to build a just and inclusive society, copyright must be embedded within, and seen as part of, a broader system of supports, incentives, and social programs focused on justice and inclusion. This paper will identify several ways in which the current Canadian copyright regime is in tension with the goal of building a just and inclusive society. It will then highlight a number of supports, incentives, and programs that together with copyright can help make our society more just and inclusive. In particular, it will emphasize the important role played by libraries in seeking to build a society in which everyone has the opportunity to learn, create, and communicate in ways that are consistent with one’s own cultural and legal traditions, and in an environment that is safe and secure
The Damage Done: How the Disease Model of Addiction Harms Marginalized People in Canada
No full textOver 50,000 Canadians have died of unregulated drug poisoning since 2016. And while the toxic drug crisis is the leading cause of death in British Columbia for people between the ages of 10 and 59, some British Columbians are at a higher risk than others. In 2023, First Nations people—who comprise 3.4% of BC’s population—accounted for 17.8% of its toxic drug deaths. Other marginalized communities are also at heightened risk: racialized people, young people, and people living in poverty or without shelter are all disproportionately impacted. These disparities reflect more than a public health crisis—they largely exist due to legal frameworks and policy choices that continue to pathologize and punish substance use, especially among marginalized communities.
This Article argues that the prevailing “disease model” of addiction has not disrupted punitive approaches to drug policy and has instead justified coercive legal interventions designed to treat the “disease of addiction.” While harm reduction is nominally a pillar of Canada’s drug policy, popular reforms like drug treatment courts and involuntary substance use treatment remain grounded in the disease model’s approach to the conceptualization and treatment of addiction, an approach that is inconsistent with harm reduction principals and fails to address the structural conditions that contribute to drug-related harms. Meaningful drug policy reform requires more than a simple shift from criminalization to medicalization; a true harm reduction framework must approach problematic drug use as a complex social and public health issue and not simply as a disease to be treated
Testing Our Faith: Why It Is Important to Study the Complexity of Client Experiences in Family Dispute Resolution
Full text linkIncreasingly across Canada, court-based processes are being recast as forums of ‘last resort’ for family conflict. Studies inviting lawyers to reflect on the success of their collaborative negotiations, mediations, and settlement conferences show optimism—faith that the quality of their clients’ experiences has been more positive, or, at least, less damaging. As researchers, however, we know less about how the parties in the midst of separation and divorce actually experience those processes. The Saskatchewan study described in this article suggests that ‘the inside’ of dispute resolution (DR) processes in family conflict might be as qualitatively painful, negative, and difficult as the inside of court-based ones, and—yet—that people still prefer DR options. Future research needs to explore the emotional complexity of people’s experiences in the justice system. User-focused feedback may test legal professional’s assumptions, making room for authentic acknowledgements of the difficulties and strains which co-exist with the benefits of DR processes. User-focused feedback is also essential to help refine reform agendas in the family law justice arena
Frustration of Contract
No full textFrustration of Contract is a comprehensive treatment of the law of frustration in Canada and is the first book on this subject matter. Frustration is perhaps the strongest legal intervention in a contract bringing it to a termination when an unexpected catastrophic event makes the contract radically different from that to which the parties agreed.
Frustration of Contract examines what circumstances lead to frustration (and which do not) and discusses the consequences of frustration. It also examines the use of force majeure clauses that obviate the need for the doctrine of frustration.
[From https://store.lexisnexis.com/en-ca/frustration-of-contract.html]https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/books/1410/thumbnail.jp
Streaming, Copyright and Creators: a Canadian Perspective
Full text linkThis paper will provide an introduction to streaming and copyright in Canada. It will proceed in five parts. Following this introduction, Part 2 of this paper will define streaming, discuss some of the benefits that flow from the widespread use of streaming services, and outline the extent to which streaming technologies are in use in Canada today. In so doing, this paper will distinguish between three types of streaming services: streaming services that secure authorization from rights-holders before making content available; streaming services that rely on technological measures or liability exemptions in order to host content in a non-infringing manner; and streaming services that host content in ways that prima facie infringe copyright.
Part 3 of this paper will examine the legal status of streaming under Canada’s Copyright Act. Over the past decade, a number of amendments have been made to the Copyright Act in response to the emergence of streaming services. Similarly, a number of judicial decisions have considered whether and the extent to which streaming infringes copyright in Canada, and if so what remedies might be available to copyright owners. These amendments and decisions will be described in this section, along with a general discussion of copyright in Canada as it relates to streaming services.
Part 4 will address the impacts of streaming on Canadian creators. It will begin by discussing the consequences, for creators’ audiences and incomes, of the ongoing shift from a traditional distribution model to a streaming model. Next, it will describe how a number of programs meant to assist Canadian creators – including those that require broadcasters to provide funding to assist Canadian creators and to present a certain percentage of Canadian content – do not extend to online streaming services. As part of this discussion, it will survey a number of recent attempts to reform Canada’s broadcasting framework as it relates to streaming services. Bill C-10, a recent (and heavily criticized) attempt to bring streaming services within the ambit of Canada’s broadcasting regulatory regime, died on the order paper on 15 August 2021, when Governor General Mary Simon dissolved Parliament at the request of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, triggering an election campaign. On 2 February 2022, an updated version of this bill (now known as Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act) was introduced by the federal government. This bill received royal assent on April 27, 2023.
Building on the above analysis, this paper will conclude in Part 5 by highlighting three points that in the view of the author should be kept in mind in the context of any debate about streaming and copyright in Canada: the importance of ensuring universal access to streaming services; the importance of preserving the balance between copyright owners’ rights and the public interest; and the need to ensure that any discussion about legal reforms relating to streaming foregrounds the question of how best to support creators in light of the ongoing shift to streaming-based media
Do the Canadian Practical and Legal Frameworks on AI Adequately Address the Uses of LLMs in Courts?
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