Legalviews Personal

Current procedures and deadlines for filing and serving court documents can cause great delay and annoyance. Sometimes they might have fatal results, by missing limitation periods. Here are two recent examples of how things can go wrong, and how important are the Court’s Notices or Announcements.

(a) Format of Record for the Court of Appeal

One appeal Record was tendered for filing on the last day. (The deadline was tight because it was a fast-track appeal.) But the Registry rejected the document for format reasons. On the same day, the appellant tendered a corrected format for filing. The next business day, the appellant served the respondent with unfiled copies of this record. The day after that, the Registry rejected the transcripts and did not file them, because there was no indication that the respondent had got a copy of the submission document. The same day, the Registry struck the appeal for missing the filing deadline. The appellant then applied to restore the appeal, but the respondent opposed that application. After some time, a Justice properly ordered the appeal restored. (See Marshall v. Lee 2024 ABCA 86, Calg 2301 0178 AC (one JA Mar 13).)

(b) Serving an Unfiled Copy

When a court document is to be served, the invariable Alberta practice is to serve a copy bearing an endorsement or stamp showing that it has been filed, not an unfiled copy. But most statutes or Rules of Court do not require that the copy served bear such an endorsement or stamp, even where there is a deadline for filing and serving. In 2022, Queen’s Bench developed a huge backlog of documents waiting to be filed, so it became impossible to serve a “filed” copy within most relevant deadlines. A court Notice to the public told litigants to serve an unfiled copy within the deadline for service, and then later serve a “filed” copy when one became available. One litigator served nothing within the deadline, but later served a “filed” copy. On appeal, the Court of Appeal held that it could not extend the time for service, as it was dictated by a statute, and so the appeal must be dismissed. (The statute was the Provincial Administrative Penalties Act 2020 c. P-30.8 s. 24(2).) The Court said that serving an unfiled copy in time would not have been a nullity, especially given the Notice issued by the Queen’s Bench to the public. (See Siciliano v. Director of SafeRoads 2024 ABCA 62, Edm 2203 0178 AC (Feb 23).).

– Hon. J.E. Côté

MORE TROUBLES FILING AND SERVING COURT DOCUMENTS