217. New Year's Resolutions

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With death more of a mind-tickler at my age, each year is becoming more precious. Having experienced the departure of friends and acquaintances by accident, or illness, other than my mother who found a most wonderful, final departure in her sleep at 92, none, thankfully in my immediate family, are suffering from anything 'before their time.' 

Still, I have seriously decided (I know I spoke of this last year) to put my battles, and inputs to society to bed this year. It has become an all consuming lifestyle, and although it may appear to some as self-indulgent, the objective is and has been essentially to challenge the hypocritical status quo. 

My 'kids,' all adults now, have ingrained pessimism. "Dad, you can't change the system..." "Stop already! Relax, have fun, do your puttering; grow a garden"....etc.  

So, with that reality creeping to the fore, I have given myself this year as a deadline.

Will my very daring to take on and question the Ministry also be considered "vexatious and an abuse of process"? With our new government in place, and the general well-meant rattlings of others, all nibbling at the legal hypocrisy, I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Access to 'JUSTICE' indeed!

Preparing myself then for the upcoming Feb 12th, Victoria slated Summary Trial, the following is a study result from a recent NSRLP article, which is pertinent and, as such, gravely concerning.

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RE: "SUMMARY JUDGMENT"

“We next reviewed each of the 65 cases we found in 2014, and removed each case that included either a formal declaration that the SRL was a “vexatious litigant”, or any indicia in the judgment hinting at vexatiousness or “process abuse” (for example, multiple filings in this case, or previous actions on similar points)[5].

This review left us with 45 cases in which there was no reference to vexatious behavior or process abuse – instead the summary judgment decision focused on the merits of the arguments, the technical completeness of the pleadings, and the sufficiency of the evidence being presented by the SRL.

•   In this “sanitized sample”, the increase in summary judgment applications from 2004 to 2014 is still 800%.

•   Where SJPs were brought by represented parties against SRLs (almost all the cases), success was still almost universal: 98% of applications in this group succeeded[6].

Almost half of the decisions as reported – which include appeals against an order of summary judgment – include no or minimal judicial reasoning on the summary judgment issue, making further analysis difficult.”

…….

“What does all this mean?

Broadly speaking, the data confirmed our worst fears. We were concerned at the outset that SJPs might be being used against SRLs in a way that took advantage of their confusion and lack of knowledge and skill.

The results suggest that SJPs are increasingly being used successfully against SRLs. And given the results we see even when we remove cases formally or informally referencing “vexatiousness” or “process abuse”, this suggests that many cases are being struck because of technical errors that are unintentional and could be addressed if SRLs had more assistance.

Or – perhaps most worrisome – that the SRL stereotype rather than the reality of “vexatiousness” in a particular case is being used, rather effectively, by counsel to appeal to judges to order summary judgment against a SRL. Without more complete reasoning offered in many of the decisions, this is difficult to assess.”

……

“Recommendations

There are four recommendations in the full report. These are for:

•   Better monitoring of SJP decisions and outcomes

•   Further and better judicial education informed by this data

•   Enhanced assistance for SRLs who are presently often “ambushed” and unaware of what is happening in a SJP

Consideration of whether the strategic use of SJPs against a SRL raises questions of ethical practice for lawyers.”

(This research was conducted by Julie Macfarlane with Katrina Trask and Erin Chesney

[5] We could not of course appraise the fairness of such conclusions, and simply accepted them on face value.

[6] We counted partial success as 0.5 in our calculation)
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+ Better monitoring of SJP decisions and outcomes
- Hopefully my February 12th, Victoria appearance can  be 'monitored', with a number of attendees who have had experience 'in the field,' and are able to make note of proceedings.  
- Maybe I can attract some media to sit in, and instead of being "ambushed" to become but just another ignorant SRL, help to make concrete steps towards that which we continue to call 'JUSTICE.'

Let's work on helping to make this a turn-around year, away from hypocrisy, in to the creation of a true democracy. Our new government has given us that incentive. Let's support them all we can and back them up!

I encourage my readers with thoughts on this to contact me.