Public Lecture by Professor Lewis Klar, QC
On Friday March 18th, the Tort Law Research Group hosted its second public lecture. Professor Lewis Klar, QC, from the University of Alberta, presented a lecture entitled “The Tort Liability of Public Authorities: Where Does Canadian Law Go from Here?"
In his lecture, Professor Klar critiqued the last decade of decisions on public authority liability in Canada. In particular, he questioned the courts’ reliance on statutory provisions to determine whether a private law duty of care exists to prevent such harms as the outbreaks of SARS and West Nile Virus, defective medical implants, or the dishonesty of mortgage brokers and lawyers. Professor Klar argued that this approach is contrary to the leading case of R v Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.
Turning to the future of public authority liability, Professor Klar suggested that, ifSaskatchewan Wheat Pool is taken seriously, it should be extremely difficult to establish a duty of care owed by public authorities for their failure to prevent harm. If this lack of liability is troubling, he suggested that the courts could replace Saskatchewan Wheat Poolwith a special regime of liability designed for public authorities, or that legislatures could expressly provide for tort liability in the governing statutes.
Professor Klar is a former Dean at the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta, and his torts publications have been cited on numerous occasions by the Supreme Court of Canada and several foreign courts. He has received several national awards for his scholarship, and is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Click here to download an MP3 of the lecture.
Professor Klar (second from right) with Professors Jason Neyers, Erika Chamberlain and Stephen Pitel.
