A criminally-themed first year? Clinics, Law Review, and our first case!

Another week has flown by and I'm starting get the feel of what the year will be like - classes punctuated by reading stints in the library, with a healthy dose of extra-curriculars thrown in for good measure; all in all, not a bad deal!

This week my two principal extra-curricular activities were finalized as I attended introductory sessions to the two organizations at the law school that I'm going to be involved with this year: the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review (a journal) and the Downtown Legal Services Clinic. Both are very different but will be rewarding, as well as great opportunities for me to pick up some more practical skills. The Law Review is a journal of student papers submitted across Canada on a wide variety of legal topics, and is published by a group of students here at the law school. The way it works is that two co-editors in chief essentially oversee the operation, an executive team of editors supports them and writes content of their own for the journal (e.g., case comments, which are brief papers that discuss a recent court ruling of broader interest, as well as a new feature called the "Year in Review" that will catalog all the major appeal court decisions in Canada). These senior editors also run smaller teams of editors called "cell groups" that tackle specific areas of the law, receiving papers from students across Canada, and critically reviewing them to determine which ones should be published. This process involves reading papers, checking them for originality/accuracy through independent legal research, and of course, the onerous process of verifying that all the citations used by the author are correct and accurate (RAS friends; think of this as TB Acting as CPC on steroids!) Once papers have been selected to be published in the Review or presented at our annual conference, we then work with the author to get their paper in publish-able shape by providing feedback and suggestions. First years like myself are typically placed in one of these cell groups, and I was selected for the Criminal Law Group. As many of you know, criminal law is one of the areas that may be of interest for me post-law school, and so I'm really looking forward to picking up more substantive knowledge of the law through this opportunity, as well as figuring out how to do legal research while I'm at it.

The "criminal theme" of my first year won't stop there though; for my other significant commitment, Downtown Legal Services, I've been posted to their Criminal Law Division as well! This will be a more "hands-on" opportunity, as over the course of the year, I'll have the opportunity to work with lawyers and other students  on real criminal cases, including screening persons for their eligibility to use DLS's service, client counseling and interviewing, drafting statements/factums, and in second term, perhaps even representing individuals charged with criminal offences in court and plea bargaining with Crown Prosecutors. Needless to say, I'm thrilled to be a part of this clinic and volunteering there could shape up to be the highlight of my year. It will also open my eyes to some of the real problems facing our legal system, especially around access to justice. For example, yesterday, in our introductory session, I learned that even though Ontario has one of the better legal aid programs in the country, if you're a single person making roughly over $7,500 a year, or a single parent with a couple kids making over $15,000 a year, you do not qualify for legal aid! Given that even if you're only making minimum wage you would be over that cutoff, it makes you wonder who actually gets legal aid services at all. What our clinic tries to do is fill in some of these gaps by taking on cases of people who wouldn't qualify for legal aid, but can't afford a lawyer; we also take cases from people who need legal assistance but legal aid and/or other clinics don't accept cases in certain areas of law; this includes most family law cases, immigration cases, tenant cases, etc. Finally, there's the infamous University Affairs division (sarcastically known as the "whiners and cheaters" division) that represents U of T students charged with academic offences or who need help appealing decisions around deferred exams at various university tribunals and bodies. In any event, I have no doubt that my experience at DLS will provide plenty of fodder for future blog posts, even if I have to significantly redact/anonymize the entries in the name of solicitor-client privilege!

Shifting gears a bit now, as promised, it's finally time for the first "case" or legal issue to be presented on this blog, and to give us a bit of a break from the criminal stuff, I'm actually going to talk a bit about a famous contracts case I've recently encountered. The way I'll run this feature is that this week I'll give you the essential facts of the case and what each side argued, and then put up a poll on the left navbar for you to vote on (will let the poll run for about a week). Then next week, I'll explain how the court ruled, whether or not you agreed, and give my own personal take on the case. So without further adieu, our first case is going to be Jacob and Youngs v. Kent, from a 1921 ruling of the New York Court of Appeals.

What happened was that Kent, a NYC lawyer, hired through his architect Jacob & Youngs' firm to build a mansion. The two parties drew up a contract outlining their various responsibilities; namely, that Kent would pay $77,000 for the mansion in a set of installments, and that the firm would construct it according to the specifications and standards laid out in the contract. The contract clearly stated that the pipe to be used for the mansion's plumbing was to be manufactured by a firm called Reading (pronounced "REDD-ing), and that any requests to substitute materials for pipe or anything else in the mansion was to be approved by Kent through his architect.

The mansion was built and Kent moved in; however, a few months after , Kent and his architect discovered that in fact, not all the pipe used was of Reading manufacture (only about one fifth of it was, though the evidence indicated that the other pipe used was of equal quality and aside from being stamped with a different manufacturer's name, there was no difference in the pipe's material or functional capability). There also didn't appear to be any malicious intent on behalf of Jacob and Youngs; either they were just not careful enough in sourcing the pipe, or they unintentionally installed a mix of different manufacturers, but in any event, they did not get the substitution approved as per the terms of the contract.

Kent wasn't too happy about the substitution, and so he withheld his final payment of $3,483 from Jacob and Youngs, insisting that they go back in and replace all the non-Reading pipe with Reading pipe. Jacob and Youngs in turn sued Kent for the outstanding balance, arguing that to rip out and replace the pipe would cost almost as much as rebuilding the entire mansion, and eventually the matter made its way to the New York Court of Appeal. Kent defended himself on the basis that because J&Y violated the contract's terms, he shouldn't have to pay the rest of the money. The question for us to decide is who should prevail in this instance: J&Y, who would argue that the pipe is virtually identical and that ripping out/replacing it would be an exorbitant cost, or Kent, who would argue that a "deal is a deal" and J&Y didn't hold up their end of the contract?

I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about this, so please cast your vote and/or post a comment below to try and persuade others of your perspective on the case. Until next week!