this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
169 points (97.7% liked)

Canada

7204 readers
283 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Communities


🍁 Meta


πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories


πŸ™οΈ Cities / Local Communities


πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


πŸ’» Universities


πŸ’΅ Finance / Shopping


πŸ—£οΈ Politics


🍁 Social and Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mars@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Don't get me wrong, this is a win and worthy of setting a legal precedent, however I am skeptical of the first line in the article:

Earlier this year in Halifax, a former sex worker won a precedent-setting case.

If this was Small Claims court, are there examples of rulings from this court actually setting precedent for other courts (e.g. Lower or Superior courts)?

[–] Rumblestiltskin@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess the significant thing is that the judge ruled this way based on current laws and past legal precedent which should hopefully be consistent in future cases.

[–] mars@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

...which should hopefully be consistent in future cases.

This was my main concern. Legal rulings are built on those that came before, however they can also be reversed by higher courts.

I found this complementary CBC article on this that provides a little bit of clarity:

But part of the immediate significance of the judgment, advocates say, is that it happened in a court that's relatively accessible; the law has been clarified that at the small-claims level, a contract for sexual services is enforceable.

That means that a sex worker who hasn't been paid by a client can now pursue that in small claims court without having to argue the law, so long as they have the supporting facts.

"Now they can bring this judgment and put it on the judges desk and say, 'here it is, there's precedent for it; I want my judgment,'" said Rose.

Note that this is a quote by the plaintiff's lawyer (Jessica Rose). I'm obviously no lawyer myself but I would read this as precedent-setting for the Small Claims Court of Nova Scotia, with the caveat that other provinces' small claims courts and all higher courts are still lacking their own ruling here. Ultimately the law itself needs to be tested in higher courts, which is also referenced in the article:

In 2021, the alliance sued the federal and Ontario provincial governments, arguing that the conditions of criminalization allow exploitation to flourish. That case had its first hearing in October 2022, and is awaiting a judgment. If successful, it could result in the law being struck down, paving the path to full decriminalization of sex work.

load more comments (1 replies)