iN DISCUSSION: Why does our justice system let vexatious litigants waste its time?

This is where cold hard facts give way to the hottest of takes, mostly mine I suppose. I’m the editor, Marshall Jones.

Want to include yours? Listen, this isn’t the comment section, this isn’t social media. Discussion and debate requires context and a wee bit of bravery — we need your name and where you’re writing from. Include it in your account or email me anytime.

This isn’t about the pandemic, free speech or gathering

Some folks started gathering regularly in a downtown Kelowna park shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Microphones, speakers, tents blocking public spaces.

The City of Kelowna fined the organizers but they didn’t stop. In 2023 the City went to court to get an injunction.

After three years of legal proceedings, the case still isn’t done.

A couple more years, a few more fat stacks of taxpayer money on the fire, and we should get this wrapped up. Pardon my sarcasm.

This editorial isn’t about a pandemic. This isn’t about free speech or gathering.

This is about the coughing, sputtering system of justice in this province, this country, that can’t seem to see the forest for the trees.

Justice Brianna Hardwick allowed the defendants in this case to take her down a dead end application that cost, by my rough math, nearly two years of wasted time in court and in the park and hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs.

All for a matter that is largely moot.

Hardwick complained in her decision that the defendants submitted 1,800 pages for her to read. She allowed one of the defendants, David Lindsay, to file a 28-page response, which later ballooned to 82 pages. She let him spend nine days of court time spread over an entire year to make a case that was clearly doomed to fail.

This credit, this courtesy, this leeway was given to a man declared a vexatious litigant in 2006, a man who gleefully runs up court bills he knows he can never pay.

This despite a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that implored judges to save the institution by “dismiss(ing) such applications and requests the moment it becomes apparent they are frivolous.”

Folks, I’m not a judge, I’m not a lawyer. I never went to law school. I’m not even very smart.

But this is one of those cases that fits the bill. I have a lot more to say on that in a future editorial, but for now, I’d just be satisfied if judges stopped entertaining every single application that arrives on their desk.

I’d love to know your thoughts. Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

iN RESPONSE

iN RESPONSE to Monday’s newsletter opinion-editorial on vexatious litigants and our justice system

Oh I do SO agree with your closing statement. It’s about time judges put on their ‘adult’ pants
and threw out cases that should never see the inside of a court room!!!

— Sandy Calder via email

I agree with you 100%.
It’s about time the courts quit giving voice to the absurd!!!
Wasting tax payer money and giving these airheads a platform!!
Similar to the Truckers Convoy in my opinion.

— Diane Courneyeur via email

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