functus officio
Reopening Decided Cases: a “Jurisdictional” Problem
Felix Frankfurter once described jurisdiction as “a verbal coat of too many colours”. Exhibit #4579009 is Fraser Health Authority v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal, 2014 BCCA 499, which features three sets of reasons on tribunals’ authority to reopen closed decisions (though the concurring reasons of Goepel J.A. contain mostly a brief treatment of the merits […] Read more
Functus Officio in Administrative Law
A long-running battle being waged by employees of Health Canada against their employer’s drug-approval procedures gives a glimpse of the law on the reopening of administrative decisions: Chopra v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013 FC 644.Here, the original complaint made by the employees to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner was investigated and dismissed (though only after […] Read more