Knight v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, 2020 ONSC 5198

CITATION: Knight v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, 2020 ONSC 5198

COURT FILE NO.: 51/19

(Hamilton)

DATE: 2020-08-31

SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - DIVISIONAL COURT - ONTARIO

RE: Knight v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario

BEFORE: D.L. Corbett J.

COUNSEL: Ms Knight self-represented Applicant Brian Blumenthal for the HRTO Susan Munn for Surrey Place Sophia Zaidi for Manufacturers Life

CASE MANAGEMENT ENDORSEMENT

[1] This endorsement reflects a case management conference conducted by teleconference on August 17, 2020. As reflected in my endorsement of June 23, 2020 (Knight v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, 2020 ONSC 3896), this application from decisions of the HRTO requires ongoing case management to ready it for hearing.

[2] This application for judicial review shall proceed before a panel of three judges of the Divisional Court on January 13, 2021, for an estimated 4.0 hours. Ms Knight will have up to 2.0 hours to make her oral submissions and respondents will have up to 2.0 hours for submissions in the aggregate. The hearing shall take place by Zoom videoconference; neither counsel nor the court shall gown for the hearing.

[3] On consent, the application is dismissed as against all of the personal respondents. It shall continue as against the HRTO, Surrey Place, and Manulife.

[4] The application is in respect to the following decisions of the Human Rights Tribunal: 2017 HRTO 281 (Sanderson), 2018 HRTO 192 (Cook), 2019 HRTO 482 (Cook) and 2019 HRTO 1221 (Cook).

[5] It is ordered that: (a) HRTO serve the Record of Proceedings by August 28, 2020; (b) the applicant serve her application record and factum by September 25, 2020; (c) respondents serve their responding materials and factums by November 6, 2020, and (d) the applicant serve any reply materials and factum by November 25, 2020.

[6] After the case management teleconference but before release of this endorsement, Ms Knight contacted the court to advise that she and the HRTO disagreed over the contents of the Record of Proceedings. The responsibility for compiling the Record is the HRTO’s. Once the Record has been served, Ms Knight may seek a further case management teleconference, if she is so advised, respecting any issues she has with it. She should explain the reason why a teleconference is required in her request, and she should try to do so as early as possible once she has reviewed the Record served by the HRTO.

[7] The court is about to transition from using “drop boxes” provided by counsel to using Caselines for delivery of materials to the court. It is anticipated that Caselines will be the means for delivery by the time the parties have completed their exchange of materials. All parties shall upload their materials to Caselines by November 25, 2020 with the exception of costs materials, counsel sheets and compendiums for oral argument, which may be uploaded by January 8, 2021. Information on how to do this should be available on the court’s web site prior to November 25th; if the parties have difficulty providing materials to the court as directed, they may seek further directions from the court by email or ask for a further case management teleconference.

[8] In respect to materials filed for the application, in addition to the documents required by the Rules of Civil Procedure, the parties:

(a) Shall file (i) their agreement on costs or their costs materials; and (ii) a counsel sheet identifying all persons appearing on the record and the time estimates for oral argument for all persons with a speaking role at the hearing; and

(b) May file a factum compendium and/or a compendium for oral argument.

[9] In their factums the parties shall provide hyperlinks to public legal databases to authorities and shall not file briefs of authorities, excepting only that parties may file a brief of authorities containing any authorities not available on public legal databases.

[10] 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: August 31, 2020