Ontario Court Status Hearings
Court rules can be very perplexing and the obligations imposed can be onerous. If a Plaintiff has commenced a legal action in Ontario sometime after a certain period you can expect to receive a notice from the court. The notice is typically delivered two years after the commencement of an action and it's referred to as a Status Hearing. Normally, the parties are required to attend before the court and report where the matter is at. Status Hearings can become very time consuming and often the Plaintiff almost always through inadvertence has the action dismissed. This usually requires bringing an official motion before the court to reinstate the matter. While in most cases the action is unopposed and reinstated there are many situations where the Defendant's oppose the motion.
A recent reported decision, Gorouvein v. Toronto Transit Commission 94 O.R. (3d) 225 involved just that. The Defendant TTC was opposing the Plaintiff's motion to reinstate the action. The action started in 2005 and the Plaintiff failed to comply with the timetable to set the matter down by August 15, 2008. The court allowed the Plaintiff to reinstate the matter. However, costs were still given to the Defendant and this was largely due to the Plaintiff's deficient motion material causing the court to rely on the Defendant's material to determine what happened.
Plaintiff counsel had attributed the inadvertence to a clerical error. Nonetheless, Plaintiff counsel must have breathed a sigh of relief. Having an action dismissed while in the carriage of a lawyer can be very distressing as it could have the potential of a negligence claim against the solicitor of record.
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