The BC Courthouse Library Society is pleased to introduce Ask A Librarian, a column designed to answer queries regarding BCCLS services, sources for legal information, and legal reference questions. Reference staff at the Vancouver Courthouse Library will respond to your questions with quality research strategies and will refer to resources available through the courthouse library system. All questions will be treated as anonymous. Please send us your questions at 604.660.2841, fax us at 604.660.2821 or e-mail us at bccls@bccls.bc.ca.

I’m looking for an article that may have been in a CLE publication or maybe The Advocate a few years ago. It was about assessing damages for wrongful dismissal, by a guy named Wind or something like that. Where can I find it?

We start our search in the Square One: Index to CLE Publications, an electronic resource, which profiles CLE papers and course materials. This index is available at courthouse libraries in Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, New Westminster, Prince George, Vancouver and Victoria. In the “Advance Query” template we enter wind* and wrongful dismissal. This search brings up a chapter on labour and employment law by Steve Winder that appeared in the 2000 Annual Review of Law and Practice. This could be the name of the author, but it’s definitely not the article.

The next step is to search LegalTrac, an index to periodicals available at all courthouse libraries with computers. In the keyword search page we enter winder and wrongful. This brings up “Winder, Steve M. “Swift Justice in Wrongful Dismissal Cases: The Difficulty of Assessing Damages in a Post-Judgment Period of Notice,” (1999) 57 The Advocate: 513-19.” Advocate articles from July 2000 forward are available in full-text from LegalTrac but a copy of this particular article could be ordered through the BCCLS photocopying service.

If LegalTrac had turned up no hits then we would use The Advocate Index, an in-house database that indexes articles in The Advocate, which we are developing for use on the Internet. A search with wind in the title field and wrongful dismissal in the subject field will produce the same article by Steve Winder. Again, a copy of this article could be ordered using the BCCLS photocopying service.

I have a citation (2002 BCCA 94) and I don’t know what it means. I don’t think it’s a reporter series.

This is an example of a neutral citation, a recently established method of identifying judgments brought about by the advent of Internet availability of court decisions. The neutral citation is intended to make judgments easier to reference. The BC Supreme Court, BC Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada all use neutral citations. The BC Court of Appeal Civil Practice Directive #1: Citation of Authorities has more information on how to cite judgments using neutral citations. Examples of neutral citations from the three courts are: 2002 BCSC 1042, 2002 BCCA 94, 2002 SCC 257.

This article was published in the August 2002 issue of BarTalk. © 2002 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.