Red Herring Definition: An irrelevant legal issue. In R v Glover, the Alberta Court of Appeal :"[R]ed herring is used in contemporaneous speech to refer to a topic which has no substantial relevance, and tends to distract one. Whatever its origin, the phrase no longer refers to fox hunting or to deliberate trickiness. It is used by lawyers and judges all the time...." In R v Ayvaz, Justice Clark adopted these words at ΒΆ6:"[R]ed herring is ... an irrelevant legal or factual issue." REFERENCES:R. v. Ayvaz, 2009 CanLII 45326R. v. Glover, 2003 ABCA 377 Categories & Topics: Civil Litigation & Evidence Law Dictionary Find you are constantly looking up definitions? Try our search provider (works in most modern browsers) If you find an error or omission in Duhaime's Legal Dictionary, or if you have legal term suggestion, we'd love to hear from you!