Ian Mulgrew: B.C. court has too few judges, so trials adjourned
Credit to Author: Ian Mulgrew| Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2020 01:15:36 +0000
After nearly four years of pain and anxiety, Lois Salmond sat expectantly in a crowded courtroom Monday waiting to begin a 15-day trial. But her case, along with many others, was bumped.
B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson adjourned 11 trials, apologetically explaining he lacked judges to keep up with the workload — sorry for the inconvenience, stress and extra cost.
Salmond, the plaintiff in her case, waited around for about 90 minutes in the hope a judge might be miraculously found — but no such luck.
“There were seven or eight witnesses inconvenienced, but it does seem to be a system that’s out of control,” she complained Tuesday, adding she couldn’t really talk about the specifics of her lawsuit.
A veteran Vancouver lawyer, Salmond was injured in a motor vehicle accident nearly four years ago.
“I’m normally in the criminal courts and there are strict rules that demand trials be finished within a few years or the case is tossed out,” she said.
“But this is a situation where people are injured and dealing with economic circumstances, emotional circumstances, everything to do with being an injured person, and then to be bumped at the last minute and having to endure a significant delay. I’m really quite horrified by the way things progressed.”
There should be reasonable offers within a reasonable time on motor vehicle cases of merit and there should be more judges, she suggested.
“There just aren’t enough judges,” Salmond insisted. “I’m definitely affected. My whole life has been turned upside down by this accident and it’s surprising to me how few controls there are on the civil system.”
Salmond said the experience left her shaking her head, so she couldn’t imagine what those unaccustomed to the hallowed halls of justice thought.
“When I started as a lawyer, I felt very proud to be part of our justice system,” she said.
“But I can’t say I felt very proud yesterday to be part of this justice system. I really feel badly for other people who would find being in a courthouse and the intense atmosphere and stress of being in a courthouse to be too overwhelming for them. I don’t find it too overwhelming but I think most people would. … It does seem to be a game, a game of chance.”
Hinkson advised all parties individually that there were no judges available to hear their cases and sent them one by one down to the registry to get new dates.
He said the court has generally expected most motor vehicle cases to end in settlements rather than trials.
Trial lawyers complain that when you combine the ICBC’s “meat chart” low-ball settlement approach to litigation with too few judges, due process grinds to a halt. It’s appalling, in their view.
The bumping in Vancouver seems to have been an intermittent problem for most of the decade — in 2015, there were 20 trials bumped, in 2016 only five trials and in 2018 only six.
Bumping spiked to 49 trials in 2012 and 34 trials in 2017 and last year was a new high in the city — 56.
But look across the province and the scope of the situation clearly worsened last year — 140 trials were bumped. Only 33 were adjourned in 2018, 98 in 2017, 21 in 2016 and 43 in 2015.
This year is not off to an auspicious start.
The chief justice last February blamed the problem on the shortage of judges — the complement was down 10 at the time, he said.
Since the Liberals came to power in 2015, there have been as many as 14 vacancies at a time on the B.C. Supreme Court because the Justin Trudeau administration put in place an appointments’ process to increase judicial diversity that has proved slow.
Over the last year, in spite of new appointments — including in December of Justice Peter Edelmann, a top Vancouver immigration and refugee lawyer — the court is currently down seven from its legislated complement of a chief, associate chief and 90 justices.
The bench heard 1,243 trials in 2009 across the province. That declined last year to 987. In 2018 there were 870 trials, in 2017, the bench conducted 873, in 2016, 887, and in 2015, 969.
The federal Department of Justice said Justice Minister David Lametti was doing the best he could and the delay in appointing more judges was due to the October election.
Press secretary Rachel Rappaport said the government stopped making appointments last summer when the B.C. bench was nearly at full complement because of the looming campaign.
“Between February and June 2019, we appointed seven new justices to the Supreme Court of British Columbia, bringing the total number of vacancies down to two. No further superior court appointments were made between July and November 2019 due to the federal election.”
As a result, during that time, retirements and other judicial moves have again left the bench light.
The minister will fill the remaining vacancies in due course, Rappaport added.
ICBC was reviewing Hinkson’s comments and its own data on adjournments.
The company said it makes every effort to minimize legal costs by settling out of court and in 2018, the most recent year for which data was available, 99.8 per cent of injury claims were settled.