Marcus v. MoRoCo Chocolate Bar Restaurant, 2009 HRTO 1100

HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL OF ONTARIO

B E T W E E N:

Izdihar Marcus

Applicant

-and-

MoRoCo Chocolate Bar Restaurant and John Hudson

Respondents

INTERIM DECISION

Adjudicator: Ken Bhattacharjee

Date: July 22, 2009

Citation: 2009 HRTO 1100

Indexed as: Marcus v. MoRoCo Chocolate Bar Restaurant

1The purpose of this Interim Decision is to address the applicant’s Request that the proceedings be expedited, and to correct the name of the individual respondent.

2The applicant filed an Application under s. 34 of the Human Rights Code, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, as amended (the “Code”), and a Request to Expedite Proceedings on May 25, 2009.

3The applicant requests that the proceedings be expedited because of a family emergency and a private issue. With respect to the family emergency, she states that she has to be with her elderly mother to attend to her health needs. With respect to the private issue, she states that she will be away from Toronto soon, four months have passed since the termination of her employment, and delaying the proceeding may harm her “personal issues”.

4The applicant subsequently sent the Tribunal an undated letter with further information about her request to expedite proceedings, but did not send a copy of it to the respondents. As such, the Tribunal returned the letter to the applicant and directed her to send a copy of it to the respondents and re-file it with the Tribunal by no later than July 15, 2009. To date, the applicant has not re-filed the letter.

5The organization respondent filed a Response to Request to Expedite Proceedings on June 25, 2009, which opposes the applicant’s Request. The organization respondent states that the applicant’s Request does not contain sufficient information to determine whether urgent circumstances are present, and does not show that harm would result if her Request is denied. The organization respondent further states that the applicant’s employment was terminated in February 2009, but she did not file her Application with the Tribunal until May 2009, which gravely undermines her professions of urgency.

6The individual respondent did not file a Response to Request to Expedite Proceedings.

7The Tribunal’s Rules of Procedure provide for applications to be dealt with in an expedited manner in urgent circumstances. Rule 21.1 provides that an applicant may request that the Tribunal deal with an Application on an expedited basis in circumstances which require an urgent resolution of the issues in dispute. Rule 21.2 requires an applicant seeking an expedited application to identify any urgent circumstances that may affect the fair and just resolution of the merits of the application, and the harm that would result if the request is denied.

8Furthermore, in Weerawardane v. 2152458 Ontario Ltd., 2008 HRTO 53, at para. 9, the Tribunal held that, for a request to expedite to be granted, the applicant must demonstrate that the circumstances are truly urgent, requiring the resolution of the human rights dispute in a particularly rapid manner as compared with the time required to complete the Tribunal’s regular process.

9In my view, the applicant has not submitted facts that are so urgent as to justify giving this Application priority for Tribunal resources over other matters. The facts that the applicant set out in her Request are too vague and lacking in detail to justify expediting the proceedings. The applicant’s Request to expedite the proceedings is therefore dismissed.

10The Application names the individual respondent as “Craig Hudson”, but the individual respondent filed a Response to the Application which identifies his first name as “John”. The Tribunal orders that the style of cause be amended accordingly.

11I am not seized of this matter.