Toronto personal injury lawyers can expect major changes to the trial scheduling process in Toronto Region courts this fall. The Toronto Sittings Project will see all two- to three-week personal injury cases scheduled during two four-week-long blocks in November 2017 and June 2018. Cases currently scheduled to be heard between September and December of this year will be heard during the November sittings, and cases scheduled for January to June 2018 will all be moved to June. Medical malpractice cases are excluded from the project because they are more likely to go to trial.
The current system
Personal injury trials make up approximately 60 per cent of all trials in Ontario, and the Sittings Project hopes to reduce inefficiencies that cause long delays in getting to trial. Because courts can’t be overbooked when trials are scheduled on a week-to-week basis, litigants are often unable to schedule a trial date before two-to-three years down the road. Project organizers and Toronto personal injury lawyers hope a new, more flexible scheduling approach will help the province process more cases more quickly, aided by the fact that many personal injury cases are settled without stepping foot in a courtroom.
“Now they might be able to put you on an earlier trial sitting and get your case heard or brought to a conclusion,” Mick Hassell of Hassell Trial Counsel told Canadian Lawyer magazine. “Most of them will settle. They’ll be able to do that a whole lot sooner.”
New approach
The new approach will not include a fixed schedule. Instead, parties with upcoming trials could be called to court at any point during the two four-week periods, allowing courts to book many more cases over that time.
“The law of average tells you that as long as you’ve set aside enough judges for that period of time, you’ll be able to get through all of those trials,” said past OTLA President and current member of the Toronto Civil Bench and Bar committee Adam Wagman to Canadian Lawyer. “And so really the point of this is to eventually provide earlier trial dates in that category of trials.”
A variety of complications could arise in this scenario, including scheduling conflicts with other regions.
“I think more lawyers are going to be double, triple and quadruple booking themselves, which is going to potentially cause delays across the province,” Ontario lawyer Sivan Tumarkin told. However, project organizers stated that “these months have been chosen because they do not conflict with sittings in Central West and Central East” regions.
Some Toronto personal injury lawyers are also concerned that a lack of fixed dates will make it difficult to secure expert witnesses, upon whom their case may depend. The project also does little to address the province’s judicial vacancies or the fact that Toronto’s judicial compliment has not grown with the past decades’ population surge.
If you or a member of your family has suffered a serious injury, contact Neinstein’s team of Toronto personal injury lawyers today to find out how our team of dedicated and experienced representatives can help.