Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:02:15 -0500

From: Richard Wright

Subject: Long Judgments

Based on the few decisions that I have read, it seems to me that a primary factor is the much greater confusion over duty (with shifting, multi-part, overlapping tests) and causation (the latter being longstanding but only recently of great significance) in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth cases, and also to the related great expansions and subsequent contractions of duties and liabilities of (1) governmental defendants and (2) with respect to pure economic loss -- two roads the US courts with rare exception have not travelled.

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Brown
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 2:42 PM
Cc: Moin YAHYA
Subject: RE: ODG: Long Judgments

As to the shorter US decisions, I have always assumed that Geoff's first suggestion - a wider consensus on fundamentals - explains them. They also display a certain economy of language which Canadian (appellate) decisions generally do not. I will defer to anything reasonable my colleague Yahya might have to say on this, though.

Although I have not sat down and counted words, some otherwise run-of-the-mill recent tort decisions out of BC and Alberta seem to me to have become inordinately (but not excruciatingly) long, I think because of difficulties courts are having in understanding and applying Cooper v. Hobart. But perhaps it is unfair to brand such decisions "prolix" since the judges were merely trying their best to grapple with a cumbersome test.

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