Dr. Rowsell

The applicant applied for caregiver benefits under the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule, claiming he quit his job to provide full-time care for his son who was injured in a motor vehicle accident.

The insurer had paid some benefits but later sought repayment, arguing the payments were made in error.

The arbitrator found that the son's injuries did not require full-time care beyond normal parental duties and that the applicant had quit his jobs for economic reasons, not to provide care.

The arbitrator dismissed the claim for additional benefits and ordered the applicant to repay $36,295.00 to the insurer, finding that the applicant had misled the insurer about his employment and caregiving status.

The appellant killed his wife and raised the defence of insanity at his first degree murder trial, arguing he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and delusions.

The trial judge instructed the jury that 'wrong' in s. 16(2) of the Criminal Code meant legally wrong, relying on previous Supreme Court jurisprudence.

The jury convicted the appellant.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Canada applied its recent decision in R. v. Chaulk, holding that 'wrong' means morally wrong.

The Court found the jury was misdirected and ordered a new trial, while affirming that the presumption of sanity in s. 16(4) is a justifiable limit on the Charter right to be presumed innocent.

The appellant struck a fellow student with a rock after reading a letter in which she referred to him as a 'nothing'.

At trial, he advanced the defence of non-insane automatism, arguing he was in a dissociative state caused by a psychological blow.

The trial judge acquitted him, finding he was not insane and had acted in a state of automatism brought about by an external cause.

The Court of Appeal reversed the acquittal, holding that the psychological blow was not an externally originating cause and that the dissociative state constituted a disease of the mind.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal, affirming that the ordinary stresses and disappointments of life do not constitute an external cause, and that the appellant's condition was a disease of the mind.