Understanding QuickCITE® records

QuickCITE records may pertain to cases or legislation:

  • QuickCITE case records contain two to four sections. The first section always appears and displays the primary case name, court, and judgment date. A list of parallel case citations appears below the title. Citations for reports that are accessible within Lexis Advance Quicklaw appear as hyperlinks, and you can select these hyperlinks to display the associated reports. Following the first section, the History of Case, Citing Cases, and/or Commentary Referring to this Case sections may appear, as descibed in the table below.

  • QuickCITE legislation records contain two sections. The title of the legislation appears in the first section. The legislation citation appears below the title as a hyperlink which you can select to display the associated legislation document. If the legislation was previously known by a different name, that name is listed below the legislation citation. The Citing Cases section follows the first section, as descibed in the table below.

A QuickCITE signal appears to the left of all case names referenced in both case and legislation records. These signals indicate whether the associated decision has received positive, negative, cautionary, or neutral treatment in subsequent judgments. You can select the Hide Signals and Show Signals button to toggle display the signals on or off. For information on the meaning of QuickCITE signals, see QuickCITE® Signals.

Note: The right pane of the full record contains navigation links that take you to the specific sections of the record described below.
SectionDescription
History of Case

Listed in this section are previous or subsequent proceedings relating to the primary case. The proceedings are listed from most recent to least recent. Each entry includes the case name, its QuickCITE signal, the date of decision, and court. Case citations appear below the case name. An annotation appears below the citations and summarizes the judicial outcome of the case. For information on these annotations and their meanings, see QuickCITE® Judicial Outcome Annotations.

Citing Cases

Listed in this section are decisions which have subsequently considered the primary case or legislation. Each entry includes the case name, its QuickCITE signal, the date of decision, and court. Case citations appear below the case name. An annotation in a coloured box appears below the citations and identifies how the primary case or legislation was treated in the citing case. For more information on these annotations and their meanings, see QuickCITE® Case Treatment Annotations.

Important: In some instances, large QuickCITE records are divided into parts. When you are viewing only one part of a larger QuickCITE record, a note appears below the Citing Cases section heading informing you that the search within, sort by, and graphic filter features (see below) apply only to the list of citing cases contained in the part of the record you are currently viewing.

By default, the citing cases are listed by judgment date from most to least recent. You can reorder the list by selecting a different sorting option from the Sort by drop-down list.

At the top of the section is the Search Within Cases search box and the Court/Year/Jurisdiction graphical filter. You can use either of these features to narrow the list of citing cases.

The Search Within Cases search box enables you to narrow the list of cases to only the cases containing the search terms you enter. If necessary, you can use search connectors within the search box.

Important: If no previous Search Within Cases filters are applied, the Search Within Cases feature narrows the entire list of citing cases in the QuickCITE record (or part of the record) you are viewing. If a previous Search Within Cases filter has narrowed the list, subsequent use of the Search Within feature further narrows the list. The Search Within Cases feature, however, ignores any filtering done using the graphical filter (see next).

The Court/Year/Jurisdiction graphical filter enables you to narrow the list of cases by the types of treatment they have received and/or by the court, years, or jurisdictions in which they were decided.

Graphic Filter Example

The graphical filter is a set of rows and columns. Each row in the filter identifies one of the four possible case treatments (negative, cautionary, positive, and neutral) and is represented by a unique colour (red, orange, green, or blue). Each column in the filter identifies the court, year, or jurisdiction in which the cases were decided. To choose whether you want the columns to identify courts, years, or jurisdictions, select either Court, Year, or Jurisdiction from the Court/Year/Jurisdiction selector above the filter. The selected option appears as white text on gray background.

Cells are located at the intersections of each treatment type row and each court or year column. A number in a cell identifies the number of cases in the corresponding court, year, or jurisdiction that have received the corresponding type of treatment.

Important: The numbers in the cells of the filter typically pertain to the entire QuickCITE record, whether or not you are viewing the entire record or one part of it. Therefore, if you are viewing only one part of a larger QuickCITE record, then after you apply the filter, the number of cases remaining in the list may be less than the number of cases identified in the selected row or cell, and it may actually be zero, if all the cases associated with the selected row or cell are listed in a part of the QuickCITE record you are not viewing. By contrast, if you use the Search Within Cases feature to narrow the list, the numbers in the graphic filter are updated to reflect only the number of cases listed in the part of the record you are viewing.

Use the filter as follows:

  • To limit the list to only the cases associated with a specific treatment type, select the name of the treatment type in the filter’s left margin. All cases for that treatment type remain in or are restored to the list, and all other cases of different treatment types are filtered out of the list.
  • To limit the list to only the cases associated with a specific treatment type and court or year, select the cell where the desired treatment type row intersects the desired court or year column. Those cases remain in or are restored to the list, and all other cases are filtered out of the list.
  • To reset the list to its default state, where all cases are listed, select the Reset link below the filter.
Commentary Referring to this Case

This section lists commentary that refers to the case, including commentary title, citation, and source. To view a specific commentary, click the corresponding link in the Citation column.

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