Christopher E. Taucar

The applicant sought judicial review of decisions by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario dismissing her human rights complaints against her former employer.

The Tribunal had dismissed the applications as an abuse of process after the applicant and her counsel unilaterally refused to attend the scheduled hearing.

The Divisional Court dismissed the judicial review, finding no evidence of bias or institutional bias.

The Court held that the Tribunal's decision to dismiss the applications for abuse of process was reasonable and justified given the applicant's deliberate failure to attend the hearing.

The applicant, represented by her husband, sought the recusal of the presiding judge from a Divisional Court panel hearing a judicial review application.

The applicant alleged a reasonable apprehension of bias based primarily on comments made by the judge at the conclusion of the hearing, suggesting that the applicant would be better served by independent counsel.

The judge, with the concurrence of the other panel members, dismissed the recusal request, finding that the comments were made out of concern for the applicant's best interests and did not give rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias when viewed in context.

The applicant requested an adjournment of the scheduled hearing for medical reasons and a stay of the proceeding pending an application for judicial review.

The Tribunal denied the adjournment request, finding the brief medical note provided was insufficient and the applicant's doctor refused to participate in a conference call to provide further information.

The Tribunal also denied the stay request, applying the RJR-MacDonald test and finding that the judicial review application raised frivolous and vexatious allegations of bias, there would be no irreparable harm if the hearing proceeded, and the balance of convenience favoured proceeding expeditiously given the significant delays already incurred.

The applicant brought two human rights applications alleging discrimination and reprisal.

In this interim decision, the Tribunal addressed several procedural issues.

The Tribunal dismissed the applicant's request for the adjudicator to recuse himself for bias, finding no reasonable apprehension of bias.

The Tribunal denied requests to consolidate the proceeding with a previously dismissed application or to defer it pending a Supreme Court leave application.

The Tribunal struck several paragraphs from the reprisal application as irrelevant, dismissed a 2011 reprisal allegation for delay, and permitted the applicant to amend her first application to add reprisal to certain existing allegations while denying amendments that sought to revive dismissed claims.

The applicant requested the consolidation of two human rights applications alleging discrimination and reprisal by the respondent university.

The respondent opposed consolidation and requested that certain paragraphs of the reprisal application be struck for irrelevance and repetition of previously dismissed allegations.

The Tribunal granted the consolidation request, finding it would serve adjudicative economy without prejudicing the respondents.

The Tribunal also granted the respondent's request to strike paragraphs 23 to 30 of the reprisal application, as they were irrelevant to the reprisal claims and re-raised previously dismissed allegations.

The respondents sought costs following the dismissal of the applicant's judicial review application.

The respondents sought substantial indemnity costs, arguing the litigation was duplicative, vexatious, and involved unfounded allegations of bias.

The applicant argued for modest costs to accommodate access to justice.

The Divisional Court agreed with the respondents, finding the judicial review replicated previous litigation and was entirely unfounded.

The court awarded substantial indemnity costs of $15,000 to the Swan respondents and $8,088.46 to the University of Western Ontario.

The applicant sought judicial review of a Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario decision that dismissed her discrimination complaint against her university and an arbitrator.

The applicant alleged that the arbitrator's report, which found her harassment allegations unfounded, was discriminatory and that the arbitrator lost adjudicative immunity.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding it to be a duplicative and meritless attempt to relitigate previous findings, and upheld the HRTO's conclusions on reasonable prospect and adjudicative immunity.

The applicant filed a human rights application alleging discrimination in employment based on disability and reprisal.

The Tribunal held a summary hearing to determine whether certain complaints should be dismissed for having no reasonable prospect of success.

The Tribunal dismissed the allegation that a respondent breached the Code by communicating directly with the applicant, finding no evidence that the respondent knew this violated an accommodation need.

The Tribunal also dismissed allegations regarding a short deadline and extension request.

However, the Tribunal allowed the allegation regarding a 'paranoid' comment to proceed and declined to remove the personal respondent.

Certain irrelevant paragraphs of the application were struck.

The applicant sought reconsideration of a decision dismissing her human rights application against an arbitrator and a university.

The original decision found the arbitrator was protected by adjudicative immunity and the claim against the university had no reasonable prospect of success.

The Tribunal dismissed the request for reconsideration, finding the applicant merely sought to re-argue her case and failed to establish any new facts, conflicts with established jurisprudence, or other factors justifying reconsideration under Rule 26.5.

The applicant requested to defer her human rights application regarding disability accommodation pending the outcome of a reconsideration request and potential judicial review of a related, previously dismissed application concerning workplace harassment.

The Tribunal refused the request to defer, finding that the issues in the two applications were distinct and emphasizing the need to resolve the matter expeditiously given the age of the allegations and the ongoing conflict between the parties.

The applicant filed a human rights application alleging that an external investigator (the Swan respondents) discriminated against her in preparing a report on her workplace harassment complaint, and that the University discriminated against her by relying on that report.

The Tribunal held a summary hearing to determine whether the application had a reasonable prospect of success and whether adjudicative immunity applied.

The Tribunal found that the Swan respondents acted as neutral, quasi-judicial decision-makers and were therefore protected by the doctrine of adjudicative immunity.

The Tribunal also found that the claim against the University had no reasonable prospect of success because the University reasonably relied on the investigator's report, which had not been quashed on judicial review.

The application was dismissed.

The applicant requested to reactivate two consolidated human rights applications after the conclusion of judicial review proceedings and the exhaustion of all appeals, including a refusal of leave by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The respondents did not file submissions.

The Tribunal found it appropriate to reactivate the applications and ordered them reactivated.

Following the dismissal of the applicant's application, the respondent university sought costs.

The court awarded costs to the respondent university fixed at $15,000 on a partial indemnity basis.

The court noted that the application served no public benefit, was based on voluminous materials, and was presented in a laborious manner that added significantly to the university's costs.

The applicant, a university instructor, sought judicial review of an investigator's report and the university's subsequent determination dismissing her workplace harassment and discrimination complaint against a colleague.

The parties had previously agreed to bypass the collective agreement's formal inquiry panel process in favour of a private investigation.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding that the customized, private process lacked the requisite public character to be amenable to judicial review, and also dismissed a motion to set aside a single judge's order striking the applicant's affidavit for containing inadmissible evidence.

The applicant filed two human rights applications alleging discrimination and reprisal in employment.

The Tribunal considered whether to consolidate the applications and whether to defer them pending a related Judicial Review.

Finding significant overlap in facts, issues, and parties, the Tribunal ordered the applications consolidated.

Given the pending Judicial Review seeking similar remedies and raising identical facts, the Tribunal deferred the consolidated applications to avoid concurrent proceedings and inconsistent results.

The applicant renewed a request for the production of audiotapes and other documents related to the Hospital's workplace harassment investigation.

The Board had previously deferred the request pending evidence of arguable relevance.

After hearing evidence and reviewing written submissions, the Board found that only the Peterson tape was arguably relevant and ordered the Hospital to produce copies of it for the upcoming hearing.