Its coming fast, lets start mailing the judge

bigrex wrote:Peter, thank you for the note, but I thought in the past that you have said that according to federal court rules that you cannot make the government to pay costs as part of the negotiations but that the judge has final say pertaining to legal fees.

In the Ontario Courts of Justice Act states;

"RULE 57 COSTS OF PROCEEDINGS BETWEEN PARTY AND PARTY
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Factors in Discretion
57.01 (1) In exercising its discretion under section 131 of the Courts of Justice Act to award costs, the court may consider, in addition to the result in the proceeding and any offer to settle made in writing,

(a) the amount claimed and the amount recovered in the proceeding;
(b) the apportionment of liability;
(c) the complexity of the proceeding;
(d) the importance of the issues;
(e) the conduct of any party that tended to shorten or to lengthen unnecessarily the duration of the proceeding;
(f) whether any step in the proceeding was,

(i) improper, vexatious or unnecessary, or
(ii) taken through negligence, mistake or excessive caution;

(g) a party's denial of or refusal to admit anything that should have been admitted;
(h) whether it is appropriate to award any costs or more than one set of costs where a party,

(i) commenced separate proceedings for claims that should have been made in one proceeding, or
(ii) in defending a proceeding separated unnecessarily from another party in the same interest or defended by a different solicitor; and

(i) any other matter relevant to the question of costs."

I know that this is not the Federal guidelines, but should not every court in Canada follow the same rules of Law? The only reference I could find in the Federal Courts Act pertaining to costs was this clause

"Enforcement of order for payment of money

(2) An order for payment of money, whether for costs or otherwise, may be enforced in the same manner as a judgment."

I'm not a lawyer. but I didn't see any example stating that costs cannot be assigned to the defendant in a class action, if they lose. In most class action suits, the defendant has already taken steps to repair the damage, such as recalls or improved performance ongoing, and the class actions are started to compensate for damage that had already occurred, like the new case against XL foods, for the loss of life and illness. In our case, the government did nothing to correct the situation, and would not have acted except through a court order, and only settled after their entire defense was thrown out in the preliminary hearing, as being unfounded. So if we hadn't had that preliminary hearing and just waited for the trial, these negotiations would not be happening. It would have been a judgement from the court, which I feel would have been hefty in light of the case. So, it is of my belief that the judge still has the discretion to assign costs to the government, because of their inaction before the case was entered, and their actions afterwards, including delaying payments to class members who would have otherwise been in receipt of benefits, as a bargaining tool.