Court File and Parties

Citation: Bevan v. Varcoe, 2020 ONSC 2844

Divisional Court File No.: TBA

Court File No.: FC-12-1007-01 (SCJ – Barrie)

Date: 2020-05-06

Superior Court of Justice - Divisional Court - Ontario

Re: Bevan v. Varcoe

Before: D.L. Corbett J.

Counsel: John Adair – for the Respondent / Moving Party Chris Varcoe Melanie Meghan Bevan – for herself, Applicant / Responding Party Stephen Codas – for the Office of the Children’s Lawyer

Case Management Endorsement

[1] This endorsement sets out decisions taken at a case management conference conducted by teleconference on May 4, 2020.

[2] This motion for leave to appeal from the interlocutory triage decision of Bennett J. dated April 30, 2020 (unreported), refusing to schedule a recusal motion pending the COVID-19 crisis, will proceed in writing before a panel of three judges of the Divisional Court during the week of May 19, 2020.

[3] The applicant has changed her name to Bevan from Varcoe. Order to go on consent changing the title of proceedings here and below by changing the name of the applicant/ responding party to “Melanie Meghan Bevan”.

[4] Counsel for Mr Varcoe shall provide the court by email with copies of all endorsements made in this case from and including the earlier trial decision of Bennett J.

[5] Mr Varcoe’s motion materials shall be served on Ms Bevan and the Office of the Children’s Lawyer (“OCL”) by 8 pm May 6, 2020. Ms Bevan and the OCL shall serve on each other and on counsel for Mr Varcoe any materials upon which they rely by 5 pm May 13, 2020.

[6] Counsel for Mr Varcoe shall establish a password-protected, download-only drop box from which materials may be downloaded and shall provide the court with the URL and password by 4 pm, May 14, 2020.

(a) All documents other than factums shall be uploaded to the drop box in pdf format.

(b) Documents should be labelled in a manner that identifies them clearly for members of the panel so that it is not necessary to open the document to understand what it is. Pages should be numbered sequentially within each pdf. If this is not practical, given the current state of the documents, then individual documents should be uploaded to the drop box in pdf form, so that each document is clearly labelled, enabling the court to find documents quickly in the record.

(c) Factums are to be filed in Word version. Where possible, the factums should contain hyperlinks for authorities and, if possible, hyperlinks to a “Factum Compendium”, described below.

(d) Books of authorities containing the full text of authorities should not be uploaded to the drop box. However, citations to cases in the factums are to provide, if possible, a hyperlink to the version of cases. The only exceptions to this principle are authorities not available on, such as excerpts from textbooks, foreign law, or Canadian decisions not reported on: these should be collected in a small brief of unreported authorities and filed electronically. If Ms Bevan is unable to include hyperlinks in her factum she may file a brief of authorities including the cases to which she refers in her factum.

(e) Parties may file a “Factum Compendium” containing single pages or brief portions of cases cited, and brief portions of evidence from the record referenced in the factum, hyperlinked from the factum. Where portions of cases are included in a compendium, the title of proceedings and headnote should be included as well. Where portions of the record are included in a Factum Compendium, the first page of the document and identification of where it may be found in the record should also be provided.

(f) All parties are permitted to (but are not required to) file a Factum Compendium, as described above (in addition to documents permitted under the Rules of Civil Procedure).

[7] The applicant/responding party Ms Bevan shall provide her materials to counsel for Mr Varcoe in the appropriate formats, described above, to the extent that she can do so. To the extent that she cannot, she shall serve her materials on counsel for Mr Varcoe by email, and counsel shall take what reasonable steps he can to render those documents into pdf or Word formats (as the case may be) before placing them in the drop box.

[8] Mr Adair has offered to try to assist Ms Bevan with any questions she has about procedural or technical issues. Ms Bevan may also raise such questions with the court through the email address by which she corresponded with the court to schedule this teleconference. If these ways of addressing problems are not sufficient, a further teleconference may be scheduled with a Divisional Court Administrative Judge.

[9] The court has endorsed its fiat on this endorsement this day; the unsigned version distributed to the parties today has the authority and effect of the signed version, a copy of which will be provided to the parties in due course after the suspension of ordinary court operations is lifted.

D.L. Corbett J.

Date: May 6, 2020