Concluding twelve years of efforts from a lot of JTAC members, Justice Fran Kiteley, from the Ontario Superior Court and a former JTAC member, rendered the first judgment using neutral citation in R. v. ANDREW DEL RICCIO, 2010 ONSC 01. Congratulations!
Here are the documents prepared by JTAC which relate to this great initiative:
- Canadian Citation Committee – The Preparation, Citation and Distribution of Canadian Decisions (PDF)
- Use of Neutral Citation for Case Law (PDF)
Posted by Dominic Jaar
Tags: Canadian Judicial Council, CJC, Frances Kiteley, JTAC, Judgment, Judicial Technology Advisory Committee, Neutral Citation
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Are we talking the first decision in Canada or the first in Ontario?
In Canada, according to the new protocol.
R. v. Andrew Del Riccio is cited on CanLII as both 2010 ONSC 1 and 2010 ONSC 01.
http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2010/2010onsc1/2010onsc1.html
If you conduct a search in the citation field with 2010 ONSC 01 you do not retrieve this case, you have to search on 2010 ONSC 1. Your blog says the cite is 2010 ONSC 01.
What is the correct citation format?
I have emailed CanLII as well.
Dawn,
Thank you for you interest in the neutral citation. The way we design the neutral citation, the leading zero have no value (as in a mathematical expression), they can safely be ignored.
In one of the documents cited by Dominic (http://www.cjc-ccm.gc.ca/cmslib/Committee/JTAC/JTAC-Consolidation-of-Standards-2009-04-02-E.pdf), you can read:
[31] Use a unique number for each decision, in combination with the year and court identifier. Create a new sequence of numbers for each new year, starting with “1” on January 1st. Avoid internal separators in the number. Please note that the number is to be interpreted numerically, that is to say, “001”, “01” and “1” are the same number for the purposes of the neutral citation.
For the rest, I am pretty sure that ONSC and CanLII people will sort out the situation to let you search easily that Kitely’s decision.
Daniel.
Daniel Poulin
JTAC and Canadian Citation Committee
I have received a response from CanLII as follows:
Dear Mr. Urquhart:
Thank you for pointing this out. The correct citation is 2010 ONSC 1.
The last element of the citation being a number, it can’t contain
leading zeros. This is a mistake from the Court and we have alerted them
about this. It should be corrected shortly.
Best Regards,
Frédéric Pelletier
Editor in Chief, CanLII