The sad saga of the $1,000,000+ lawsuit continues. (I am being sued by a fellow who is pissed off that he lost to a client whom I represented in a minor collection matter.)
I filed a defence, pleading absolute privilege (ya can’t sue a lawyer for representing the side that beat you), and res judicata (ya can’t sue again once you have lost your final appeal), as well as some lesser defences including lack of jurisdiction, limitations period exceeded, insufficient particulars in claim, remoteness of damages, and frivolous and vexatious behavior.
Today I received the fellow’s list of proposed witnesses – thirty of them, including the police chief, the fire chief, a handful of prosecutors, a lot of lawyers, some railroad police, an investigator from the Upper Lip Society, one dead guy, and the fellow’s elderly mom!
Only the dead guy might have had anything relevant to say.
We’re in court in a couple of weeks, at which time I sincerely hope that the judge will put the matter to bed, although I expect that the fellow would once again appeal (his previous attempt went through ten judges, including the Chief Justice for the province, and three Court of Appeal judges). If the matter proceeds, or is tossed but then appealed, I’ll make a motion for security for costs and for the fellow to be declared a vexatious litigant.
I’ve never cross-examined a dead guy before. Does one use an Ouija board or a crystal ball? What if the trial is in the heat of the summer, when the decomposition might be a bit too distracting? Sticky legal issues.
I’m picturing a seance, held around the judges bench, the gavel banging down w/o human intervention, the witness chair scraping across the floor when no one’s near it. Then an eerie disembodied voice, “Ask your questions, counselor.”.
The Law Society of Upper Canada. It regulates lawyers in Ontario. Upper Canada (now Ontario), was once a British colony, so the lawers tended to either be British upper crust or be descended from British upper crust, thus it being known as the Upper Lip Society.
The Law Society of Upper Canada was founded in 1797. Canada became Canada in 1867. Canada’s laws and legal system gradually became free of England, with the biggest jumps in 1867, 1931 and 1949, and the ties finally being cut in 1982. What's the Deal with Canada's Queen
And there’s a special provision in the Constitution itself, providing that it’s still legal to use the term “Upper Canada”, even though Upper Canada hasn’t existed since 1840: Constitution Act, 1867, s. 138.
So they’ve never got around to changing the name, just to emphasize their lengthy history: LSUC predates Canada itself.
Muffin, in Ontario, do you need the permission of the Attorney General as a condition to bring your vexatious litigant application? You do here in Saskatchewan.
Permission? Permission??? We doan need no stinkin’ permission!!! It simply falls under the Rules of Civil Procedure for a Superior Court judge to decide. Since this is the fellow’s first run at me personally, odds are that he would not be shut down permanently for being vexatious, even is this particular case is shut down for being vexatious.
Yup, th-th-th-that’s all folks.
What he is refusing to accept is that the appeal judges found that even if his facts were right and my client’s wrong (which is not the case), he was so many years behind the limitation period that it did not matter. Had I said that the moon was made of green cheese, it still would not have made any difference to the outcome of his case, for he was way too late to seek relief.
So… even if you’d been sitting on your ass crotcheting little cellphone sweaters instead of repeatedly putting up and submitting nice and complete pieces of paperwork, so long as you didn’t royally screw up he would still have lost?
I don’t want to give him any ideas, but maybe he should sue the Pope next. You know, for being the inheritor of the last dude who changed the western calendar.
Would that force the judge to hold the body in contempt? Would the body go back to the cemetary or would it be put in a holding cell? I’d imagine that would not be appreciated by those being held similarly or those charged to watch over it.
If he didn’t show, would they need a writ of habeas CORPSE-us?
Why the collective legal and judicial community of Upper Canada hasn’t dragged this guy out to Lake Superior for a canoe trip in a papier mache boat is beyond me.
Oh yeah. Ethics. You guys really need to reconsider those someday.
Yes, we have those sort of things available. Since a pre-trial had already been scheduled before I was third-partied, I will try to get the claim tossed then, and if I am not successful, then I will make a motion. Obviously that’s going about things a bit backwards, but I’d rather save the time and cost of a motion if possible, and simply rely on the pleadings at the pre-trial rather than file a full brief.
[hijack] Sad to say, we lost a young woman from the local university’s outdoor rec progam last weekend. Superior is cold – she did not survive after her canoe swamped in a late winter storm. Her partner survived.
This weekend I’m refereeing canoe races for about 400 high school students on an interior lake. Needless to say, I very, very much do not feel up to it at the moment.[/hijack]
