Asher has appeared as a legal commentator on CBC and CTV along with other TV, radio and online publications. He has also published articles in the National Post and Toronto Star and numerous scholarly articles. Finally, he has appeared on several academic panels and has been invited to speak publicly on legal issues.
Click on the links to check out some of Asher’s media appearances, academic talks and published works.
Asher Honickman on discrimination faced by independent candidates
Asher Honickman – Constitutional Democracy Under Stress – Conference 2019
Asher Honickman discusses Jody Wilson-Raybould’s shocking testimony
Judges interpreting laws: Do the words even matter anymore? (Law & Freedom 2019)
Asher Honickman weighs in on Gerald Butts testimony with Marieke Walsh
In the recent decision, Kay v Warman, in which I acted for the successful defendants/respondents, the Ontario Divisional Court confirmed that statements made about a corporation are not ordinarily of and concerning the corporation’s members. The case involved high-profile parties, but for the purpose of this blog, I want to focus on this important legal issue.
On what basis can the Governor in Council reasonably conclude that there are “threats to the security of Canada” that justify invoking the Emergencies Act? This question was front and centre during the recently concluded fact-finding hearings of the Public Order Emergency Commission (the “Commission”).
At the end of June, the Supreme Court of Canada released one of its most important contract law decisions of the last decade: Uber Technologies Inc. v. Heller [“Uber”]. The issue in Uber was whether the arbitration clause in the standard Uber services agreement was valid. The clause required the arbitration of any dispute through mediation and arbitration in the Netherlands, along with an up-front administrative and filing fee of US $14,500. There was no dispute
With the ongoing disruption to the economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many business owners are now turning to their insurance policies for relief. The question becomes whether pandemics generally and COVID-19 in particular falls within the company’s insurance policy. The short answer is “maybe”. As with all insurance questions, it depends on the precise wording of the policy and the circumstances of the loss. In this short article, I will discuss how business interruption
The recent decision of Karahalios v. Conservative Party of Canada has received a good deal of media attention, but little has been said about the case’s underlying legal issues or the implications for future cases dealing with the rights of members of unincorporated associations. In the following post, I tackle these issues and offer a proposal for a slight modification to the doctrine. The Decision The case concerned former Conservative leadership candidate, Jim Karahalios, who was
Several months ago, in the decision of Yenovkian v. Gulian, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice recognized a new privacy tort known as “publicity placing person in false light.” This tort appears unique and useful at first glance, but in my view it is actually superfluous as its elements are virtually identical to the tort of defamation while also being more onerous to prove. In the following post I discuss the history of privacy torts
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s recent decision in Girao v. Cunningham has important implications for personal injury litigation, and civil litigation trials more broadly. Girao concerned a self-represented plaintiff who had been involved in a motor vehicle accident. She took her case to trial and the jury awarded her $45,000 in general damages and $30,000 for past loss of income. Due to the application of Ontario’s Insurance Act, her damages were reduced to zero and she
The COVID-19 pandemic has hurt Canada’s job market more than anything since the Great Depression. Businesses and workers are both suffering to an extent not witnessed in most of our lifetimes. The country lost more than one million jobs in March and a recent Angus Reid survey found that a whopping 44% of Canadian households have suffered job losses or reduced hours. Not all those who are suffering have been officially terminated from their positions.
In the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Vavilov, I’ve decided to pick up a copy of A.V. Dicey’s Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. I had read passages from this book more than a decade ago when I was in law school, but very little since beyond the odd paragraph. Dicey’s book is valuable primarily as a historical work. It lays out in comprehensive fashion the principles of the British Constitution in the late 19th and early
Professor Kerri Froc has written a thoughtful guest post for Double Aspect, in which she argues that s. 28 of the Charter is not merely an interpretive provision, but is rather a substantive and justiciable section in its own right. The implication if she is correct should not be understated. Section 28 states: Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons. Professor
Earlier this month, I had the true privilege of taking part in a discussion with Justice David Stratas of the Federal Court of Appeal, who is one of Canada’s most prominent jurists, on the subject of statutory and constitutional interpretation. The conversation was part of the Runnymede Society’s annual Law & Freedom Conference. Justice Stratas and I covered a lot of ground, including the basics of statutory interpretation, the justification for the textualist approach, the
Cadieux v. Cloutier, 2018 ONCA 903 (CanLII) As any Ontario personal injury lawyer knows, the common law of damages has been modified significantly in the context of motor vehicle accidents, to the benefit of defendants and their insurers. The legislature has enacted various measures to limit the ability of plaintiffs to recover in tort. It has done so for two reasons: 1) to help limit the number of frivolous claims and thus help reduce auto
The Supreme Court delivered a bizarre decision last week in R.v. Comeau. By way of background, Comeau concerned the interpretation of s.121 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which states: “All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.” The issue for the Court was whether s.134(b) of New Brunswick’s Liquor Control Act, which, inter alia,
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s recent decision in Schnarr v. Blue Mountain is significant for two reasons. First, it provides much needed clarification to the law of occupiers’ liability, and to waivers of liability in particular. Second, it includes a detailed discussion of some of the principles of statutory interpretation. In this brief article, I discuss the Court of Appeal’s decision and, particularly, its application of the principles of statutory interpretation. I argue that the
One could scarcely find an area of law so muddied as administrative law. In a recent blog post on Double Aspect, Leonid Sirota argues (omitting some far more colourful language) that our courts continue to struggle with reconciling the basic concepts of parliamentary supremacy and the rule of law, which are said to be in conflict with one another. The Supreme Court offered what appeared to be a definitive framework in the Dunsmuir decision of
Cobb v. Long Estate, 2017 ONCA 717 (CanLII) The Ontario Court of Appeal handed down two seminal decisions last month. In the companion cases, Cobb v. Long Estate and El-Khodr v. Lackie, the Court of Appeal (hopefully) settled the doctrine in a number of areas relevant to motor vehicle accident (“MVA”) litigation. Cobb and El-Khodr were appeals arising from the assessment damages, prejudgment interest, and costs in the context of MVAs. MVA law is highly
