Daniel George Charles Glover

The appellant municipality constructively expropriated respondents' watershed property by refusing all development, having deprived the owners of all reasonable uses.

The issue on appeal was whether watershed zoning regulations enacted in 1994 formed part of the expropriation scheme and should be ignored when assessing statutory compensation under s. 27(1)(a) of Newfoundland and Labrador's Expropriation Act.

The Supreme Court restored the application judge's order, holding that the watershed zoning was an independent enactment and not made with a view to expropriation, and therefore must be taken into account in fixing the property's market value.

The Court clarified that the Pointe Gourde principle requires inquiry into whether an enactment was made with a view to expropriation, not merely whether it was causally connected to the taking.

Each party was ordered to bear its own costs.

The appeal addressed whether a federal regulator had statutory authority to implement a market-based regime requiring negotiations over compensation for retransmission of local television signals.

The majority held the proposed regime exceeded statutory authority and conflicted with the copyright scheme governing retransmission rights and exceptions.

The dissent would have found a sufficient statutory basis and no operational conflict between the two statutes.

The appeal was allowed, with costs throughout.

The appeal concerned whether downloading a video game containing musical works over the Internet engages the communication right under s. 3(1)(f) of the Copyright Act in addition to reproduction rights.

A majority held that applying a separate communication tariff to permanent downloads would offend technological neutrality because downloading a durable copy is functionally equivalent to purchasing a copy in physical form.

The majority interpreted the communication right as historically tied to performance-based activity and set aside the tariff certification as applied to downloads.

The dissent would have treated communication and reproduction as distinct independent rights both engaged by Internet downloads.