About Peter Bowal

Peter Bowal is a Professor of Law at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta.

Griffiths Energy Violates the Canadian Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act

Calgary-based Griffiths Energy International Inc. (Griffiths) was created in August 2009 to obtain oil and gas production sharing contracts in the Republic of Chad. Within two years, the corporate leadership had changed, the corporate founder Griffiths was dead, and the company faced a major corruption scandal. In November 2011, when it was conducting due diligence [...]

Whatever Happened to … Moore and Bertuzzi?

Introduction Steve Moore grew up in Thornhill, Ontario. After graduating high school in 2001, he played hockey with Harvard University for a few years. In the 2003-04 season, he broke through to sign with the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League (NHL), playing defense on the third and fourth lines. In a game on [...]

Post-Employment Legal Obligations

Introduction As with most relationships, employment relationships end. This may be by mutual parting, the employee quitting, or the employee being dismissed. The end of a relationship can mean that a few legal obligations continue. In this article, we briefly discuss the three principal post-employment obligations of workers. 1. Confidentiality Agreements Employees often come into [...]

Casey Hill and the Church of Scientology

Freedom of speech, like the other fundamental freedoms, is freedom under the law, and over the years the law has maintained a balance between, on the one hand, the right of the individual … whether he is in public life or not, to his unsullied reputation if he deserves it, and on the other hand [...]

Protection and Prosecution: Falling at Work

Introduction Just before Christmas 2009, Mr. Murgappa Naiker died instantly after falling 18.5 feet from an open bucket while de-icing an airplane at the Calgary airport. He was not wearing his safety harness. He had 17 years experience as a de-icing ramp agent and had completed updated safety training two months earlier. His employer, Servisair, [...]

Nickel Shower: An Environmental Class Action

Introduction The recent Smith v. Inco Limited case is the first Canadian environmental class action lawsuit to proceed through a trial and appeal. It shows how the courts mediate between the interests of industry and of private landowners. Inco refined nickel near the small southern Ontario city of Port Colborne on the north shore of Lake [...]

Defamation by Hyperlink

Introduction The Supreme Court of Canada’s 2011 decision in the case of Crookes v. Newton is a prime example of how individual rights as ephemeral as reputation must be balanced with other freedoms, such as expression, in this powerful, evolving medium of the Internet. Facts Website owner Jon Newton posted an article on his site [...]

Bills of Rights in Canada

When Canadians think of human rights law, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and their provincial human rights Acts are most likely to come to mind. These are the best known and most important human rights instruments. But what is a Bill of Rights and how is that different from these other two human rights [...]

The Confidentiality of Commercially Valuable Information

Introduction: the Cymbal Business In an age when multi-billion dollar companies struggle to survive, a small family-owned company called Zidjian continues to manufacture cymbals as it has for almost four hundred years. It controls almost 65% of the world’s cymbal market, with annual revenues close to $50 million. The formula of the special alloy used [...]

Whatever Happened to … R. v. Sault Ste. Marie: the Due Diligence Defence

There is an increasing and impressive stream of authority which holds that where an offence does not require full mens rea, it is nevertheless a good defence for the defendant to prove that he was not negligent. – R. v. Sault Ste. Marie, per Dickson J. at page 1313 Introduction In 1985, shortly after he [...]