Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lee Kenneth Ferrier


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Spartaz Humbug! 19:44, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Lee Kenneth Ferrier

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No secondary sources, no articles about him, article reads like a resume. Page was setup right around when he went into private practice and has links to his business. mikeman67 (talk) 21:37, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:46, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:46, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:46, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:46, 21 March 2015 (UTC)


 * No position that he's ever held constitutes any sort of notability freebie on Wikipedia, if reliable source coverage isn't there to support it. For the record, this was created as part of a larger project of creating almost-entirely primary sourced articles about all past treasurers of the Law Society of Upper Canada, out of the misguided notion that it was a notability freebie even in the absence of any actual sourcing — so the timing vis-à-vis his private practice is purely coincidental, rather than the crux of why it happened. Delete unless RS coverage can be located. Bearcat (talk) 22:51, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/Treasurers of the Law Society of Upper Canada ended in no consensus, there being no consensus that the office (as the highest office within the gift of the practitioners of a country, state or province or the highest office in the governing body of the practitioners of a country, state or province, or something to that effect) was not inherently notable. James500 (talk) 00:03, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. Judge of the General Division of the Ontario Court of Justice, and of the Superior Court of Justice: . Treasurer of the aforementioned Law Society. Adequate coverage is likely to exist, even if we cannot find it (NRVE). Some coverage in GNews. James500 (talk) 00:14, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * From NRVE: However, once an article's notability has been challenged, merely asserting that unspecified sources exist is seldom persuasive, especially if time passes and actual proof does not surface. IOW, it's not enough to claim that sourcing is likely to exist; even if you don't add it all to the article in one shot, the onus is still on you to prove — not just assert, but "show your work here and now" prove — that a GNG-satisfying level of RS coverage does exist. As well, a WP:BLP is required to have at least one reliable source in it right off the top — but this has none, which means it was technically eligible (and still is) for an immediate WP:BLPPROD. Bearcat (talk) 00:36, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am afraid that I disagree. NRVE also says that if coverage is likely to exist, deletion is per se not appropriate, whether that sourcing is produced or not. NRVE also says that if sourcing exists, it need not be directly cited at AfD. What that means is that I don't have to produce a webliography of sources that come up immediately in GNews, because asking me to do so would clearly be a time wasting tactic. Because if you want to see that sourcing, you need only search for "Lee Ferrier" in GNews, and it takes you straight to it. I haven't claimed that unspecified sources exist. I have claimed that specified sourcing exists in GNews, and I have told you exactly where to find it, and other sources are likely to exist because of the nature of the office (what I had in mind was biographies, law reports and other discussion of his judgements). What that passage you cited from NRVE is talking about is sources that are claimed to exist in cases where the nature of the topic (ie very trivial, obscure, etc, which this one isn't) makes it unlikely that any sources would exist. This, as a government source, is clearly a reliable source. As is this from the Law Society. So BLPPROD isn't available. James500 (talk) 03:48, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * To me, the links you posted are pretty clearly trivial coverage. Nor are they independent of the subject (both of those are bodies that he was apart of). I don't believe that every Ontario judge is automatically notable. I haven't found any coverage of him, beyond a passing mention of him in some news articles. mikeman67 (talk) 15:39, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * Delete. I don't think ordinary judges of the court (there are well over 200 of them) qualify as notable. They're just your ordinary court judges, and we don't usually have articles on those for Canada or any other country. The senior judges are notable, but not those at his level. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:19, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Nakon  02:14, 28 March 2015 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * 200 is not a number that is obviously too large. I would need some point of reference in order to assess that number anyway. The Ontario Court of Justice and Ontario Superior Court of Justice would appear, at first sight, to satisfy POLITICIAN as province-wide courts. I'm not sure what "ordinary court judges" means. Are they capable of setting binding or persuasive precedent? Do they have appellate functions? Can they try the most serious offences, and especially treason and murder? (Not all judges can). James500 (talk) 03:48, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm struggling to understand why those questions have any bearing on notability. If notability is meant to ensure that there is a sufficient amount of reliable sources to create an article, then whether or not the court itself can try serious offences seems to be irrelevant. But to answer your questions: yes Superior Court justices are capable of setting precedent (to other members of the court and to the Ontario Court of Justice, to Small Claims court, family court; persuasive authority to other provinces's inferior courts). The Superior Court has a few, restricted appellate functions (such as hearing appeals from the Ontario Court of Justice). However, the central appellate court in Ontario is the Ontario Court of Appeal. Yes, the Superior Court has jurisdiction to hear criminal trials, including murder or treason. mikeman67 (talk) 21:02, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment. Note that it has always been our practice (established many times at AfD) to keep judges at the higher level (e.g. US state supreme/superior court, English High Court), but not the lower level (e.g. US county and municipal court, English crown court). All these judges can try all cases and set precedent. It just so happens that (unlike the USA) all Canadian judges are provincial officials and members of the provincial superior court - that doesn't give them a free pass (all British judges are national officials - that doesn't give them a free pass either). If it did give them a free pass that would show clear bias in favour of Canadian judges against judges of other countries, and I have no idea why this should be sensible. Unfortunately, WP:POLITICIAN when referring to judges is clearly only really referring to US judges (where state judges are a level above ordinary trial judges) and not Canada (where most provincial judges are ordinary trial judges) - it should be rewritten. The senior judges of the provincial superior court should be seen as falling within the category defined by WP:POLITICIAN and therefore as notable, but the others should not. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Just to briefly add some info, all judges of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice are appointed federally, not provincially. Their authority derives from inherent jurisdiction, which is enshrined in the Canadian constitution. It's not correct to say they are "provincial judges," per se. That would be true of the Ontario Court of Justice, which is something else. Administrative aspects are carried out at the provincial level, however. mikeman67 (talk) 18:33, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, &mdash; kikichugirl  oh hello! 19:52, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The ability to set a binding precedent is suggested as a test for notability by WP:JUDGE. The other tests I suggested appear to me to be common sense indicators of both (thinking of the introduction to BIO) significance and (thinking of NRVE) the likelihood of coverage (precedents tend to be covered by law reports and trials for the most serious offences tend to receive coverage anyway). I'm not aware of reliable statistics for practice at AfD. I agree that the concept of "national/sub-national office" poses problems, but I don't think the test proposed by Necrothesp is any better. I'm not sure how the two levels he refers to are being defined. I also notice a number of apparently erroneous assumptions. There are other "levels" in the English system (eg magistrates and Court of Appeal). Not all British judges are national officials. IIRC, whether the Crown Court can set a binding precedent is disputed. High Court judges sit in the Crown Court and the 1998 practice direction on allocation of business ([1995] 1 WLR 1083, amended by [1998] 1 WLR 1244) gave them most class 1 offences exclusively, though cases of murder and incitement, attempt or conspiracy to murder could be released to a circuit judge approved for the purpose by the Lord Chancellor (now changed). And then, to blur distinctions and make things really confusing, circuit judges and recorders can sit as High Court judges as a part of their office as a circuit judge or recorder (Courts Act 1971, s 23). And I am told that the circuit judges and recorders usually get good coverage. James500 (talk) 08:18, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * This may be evidence of his judgements being cited ("Ferrier J" is an abbreviation for "Mr Justice Ferrier": Searching for citations of case law of a particular judge poses serious problems because citations don't normally include the name of the judge, on the relatively rare occasions when his name is used it will often be cryptically abbreviated to something like "per Ferrier J" (and, no, that particular search won't return even the majority of citations because that expression isn't normally included, though it does return some), and GScholar doesn't seem to include all reported cases (I know this because I tested it with Crown Court decisions reported in the Criminal Law Review and cited in the table of cases of the 1989 edition of Clerk and Lindsell on Torts and couldn't find all them). However the citing documents do indicate that the cited cases of Low v. Low, Smith v. Robinson and Fryda and Johnson were indeed decided by "Ferrier J". I am sure there will be many more that I can't find because of the cryptic way in which cases are cited.) James500 (talk) 17:54, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * No, nothing erroneous on my part. All British judges are indeed national officials - no judges are appointed at a county level (maybe you are confused by the term "county court judge"?). And I was referring to the judiciary, not the magistracy (who are obviously the lowest level). I also said higher and lower level and not highest and lowest level, an important distinction. Obviously the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court are higher. We have indeed always held that British circuit judges and American judges of a similar level are not generally notable by virtue of their position. So you do seem to be arguing special status for Canadian judges, which will allow far more of them to be considered notable than other countries. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:50, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't see the basis for saying that the American, British and Canadian judges are analogous. It is not clear what characteristics they have in common, and what sources support that proposition. Higher and lower level is not a meaningful distinction. Judges at a lower level in one country might have much greater powers than judges at a lower level in another. In that case they would not be analogous. In order to be analogous, they must, to begin with, have the same powers. That has not been demonstrated (and it would require the production of sources). I'm not convinced that judges were not appointed at the county court level before those courts were "nationalised" by the Crime and Courts Act 2013. Although circuit judges and recorders could, by virtue of their office, sit as judges in any county court, my reading of section 9 of the County Courts Act 1984 and sections 50 and 51 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 is that a person could be appointed as a district judge if, roughly speaking, he had been a barrister or solicitor for five years. If there was a provision requiring that he also be a judge of the Crown Court, or providing that he becomes one as part of his office as a district judge, I haven't seen it. So I am not convinced that district judges were "national", particulary as they could be assigned to a single district (s 6(2)(a)), whereas the circuit judges and recorders could sit anywhere (s 5). That is another apparently erroneous assumption that causes me to further doubt this line of argument. And I can't remember a single instance of an English circuit judge being deleted at AfD, despite watching DSLAW for many years, so I doubt that there is such a practice. James500 (talk) 01:07, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you probably don't realise that English "district judges" until very recently used to be called stipendiary magistrates (formerly police magistrates) and were members of the magistracy and not the judiciary (which are distinct in the English system). They are therefore not on the level we are considering here. So once again, no error on my part. And circuit judges have most definitely been deleted at AfD, as have many American judges. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I am, and was, well aware that some "district judges" (who are technically known as "district judge (magistrates' court)") were formerly called stipendiary magistrates: . But others (strictly called "district judges") were formerly called county court registrars and district registrars: . If someone's title is "district judge", I'm afraid I have to infer that he is indeed a judge, at least for the purposes of any guideline of ours, in the absence of a actual definition in that guideline. This book, from Oxford University Press, says that even DJMCs are part of the judiciary. Law Notes, a periodical for students, has the aforementioned county court registrars as "clearly and firmly" part of the judiciary in 1988, before the advent of "district judges". If English circuit judges have been deleted at AfD, kindly identify the AfDs in question. Even if they exist, I may still conclude they are outliers or too old to be relevant. James500 (talk) 06:43, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete. Non-notable. Suttungr (talk) 19:02, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * You might like to read WP:JUSTNOTNOTABLE, which is one of the "arguments to avoid". James500 (talk) 06:54, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete. I took the trouble to run this through LexisNexis, only 1 mention in Supreme Court of Canada decisions and 22 mentions for Ontario Court of Appeal and Superior Court of Justice decisions. Lack of secondary reliable sources establishing notability is also a major issue. If there is any landmark cases brought to my attention, I am more than happy to consider. - Mailer Diablo 02:49, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you mean regular LexisNexis or their Quicklaw legal service, but I searched his name as a judge on Westlaw Canada and came up with 495 results. Some of those are probably appeals of his decisions. I believe his most famous decision is this one, which is publicly viewable here: http://canlii.ca/t/205dq. It's been considered over 50 times by other courts, but I'm not sure if it would be considered a "landmark" decision. However, I believe the central issue is a lack of reliable sources to make a page. mikeman67 (talk) 21:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.