McGill stamp prominent at top court

On Friday, July 13, 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the case of Dell Computer Corp. v. Union des consommateurs, upholding the validity of an arbitration clause in an online contract that limits a complainant’s right to launch or participate in a class action suit. While the decision has important ramifications for the business-consumer cyberspace relationship, there is another interesting aspect to this case: the remarkable number of McGill connections found within the judgment.

First of all, the lead opinion was signed by McGill graduate Justice Marie Deschamps. Justice Deschamps graduated with an LLM in 1983 and was called to the Supreme Court in 2002. Our other SCC justice/graduate, Morris Fish, BA'59, BCL'62, was of the dissenting opinion, although he did not write it.

Furthermore, a total of 12 professors or former professors from McGill’s Faculty of Law were among the authors cited by the Court in its decision: Frédéric Bachand, the late John Brierley, Paul-André Crépeau, Jean-Gabriel Castel, H. Patrick Glenn, Ethel Groffier, Daniel Jutras, Roderick Macdonald, Geneviève Saumier, William Tetley, Pierre-Gabriel Jobin and Jacques Béguin.

The expertise of former McGill law students was also heavily drawn upon by the Court in reaching its conclusions, with a total of eight graduates cited amongst the authorities: Jean-Louis Baudouin, Yves Fortier, Gérald Goldstein, Dean Proctor, Ruth Sullivan, Jeff Talpis, Sabine Thuilleaux and Nathalie Vézina.

Finally, two McGill graduates, Mahmud Jamal and Azim Hussain, represented various parties and interveners before the court, while Professor Bachand represented the intervener London Court of International Arbitration.