By: Jonnette Watson Hamilton
PDF Version: The Increasing Risk of Conflating Self-Represented and Vexatious Litigants
Case Commented On: Alberta Treasury Branches v Hawrysh, 2018 ABQB 475 (CanLII) (Hawrysh #1) and Alberta Treasury Branches v Hawrysh, 2018 ABQB 618 (CanLII) (Hawrysh #2)
The August 20th decision of Justice Peter Michalyshyn in Hawrysh #2 was step two of the now usual two-step process adopted by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in Hok v Alberta, 2016 ABQB 651 (CanLII) to deal with vexatious litigants. Step one was taken two months earlier in Hawrysh #1. The two decisions are interesting for at least three reasons. First, they show just how quickly the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta now acts to restrict access to the courts by someone whose litigation behaviour is judged to be vexatious. Second, very little of the behaviour found to be abusive in these cases occurred in the courtroom or in documents filed with the court. Third, and most importantly, the litigant’s use of Pintea v Johns, 2017 SCC 23 (CanLII), [2017] 1 SCR 470 and the Canadian Judicial Council “Statement of Principles on Self-represented Litigants and Accused Persons (2006)” was held to be an independent indicia of abusive litigation justifying the imposition of court access restrictions.
These cases also appear to provide further examples of what Dr. Julie Macfarlane of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP) wrote about in her September 6th blog post, “Inequality and Discrimination in the Justice System” – that, in her words, “SRLs are “the other” in the justice system.” Specifically, Dr. Macfarlane noted that the NSRLP Research Reports show that most self-represented litigants “[a]re penalized for errors that are seen as intentional mischief-making,” and “[p]ushback is regarded as bad behaviour that must be punished.”
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