Court File and Parties

Citation: Registrar, Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, 2002 v. Caliber Motor Group Inc., 2021 ONSC 6616 Divisional Court File No.: 479/21-ML Date: 2021-10-08 Superior Court of Justice – Ontario Divisional Court

Re: Registrar, Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, 2002, Applicant And: Caliber Motor Group Inc. and Natanael Leites Martinez, Respondent

Before: Aston, D.L. Corbett and Nishikawa JJ.

Counsel: Diana Mojica, for the Applicant George J. Atis, for the Respondent

Heard: in writing

Endorsement

[1] The moving party seeks roughly $8,000 in costs for this application, which was commenced by the applicant but abandoned after early case management teleconferences with Justice Favreau.

[2] The moving party has incurred assessable costs in this court for preparation, service and filing of a Notice of Appearance. This is a trivial cost involving a one-page form. No disbursement expenses are claimed for this step presumably because it was all accomplished electronically.

[3] Practice in this court is not to award costs for case management attendances. There is a discretion, of course, for a case management judge to award costs of a case management conference, but this is rarely done and generally only where there is litigation misconduct in this court. Favreau J. did not exercise her discretion to award costs nor did she reserve costs to a panel of this court of any of the steps before her.

[4] Caliber claims costs for preparation of materials for use at case management teleconferences. This court’s practice direction makes it clear that written materials are not required for case management conferences unless requested by the court. It is for the case management judge to dispose of the costs of preparation of materials for case management conferences and generally these are not awarded.

[5] This court’s case management system is designed to provide (among other things) early judicial input, where appropriate, to facilitate resolution in appropriate cases. That system worked in this case. The application was resolved after a few quick telephone calls, with only minor assessable legal costs for the parties. Pre-COVID-19, when process in this court was driven by the parties rather than by the court, the respondent would have been required to bring a motion to quash the appeal, or to argue the appeal on the merits, in order to have it disposed of by the court on the basis of prematurity. This would have taken many weeks or months to accomplish, and thousands of dollars in legal costs. The unrecoverable costs for taking these steps, assuming a usual costs award of $2,500 or $5,000 in this court, would have greatly exceeded any reasonable costs incurred by the respondent to achieve dismissal through the case management process. The costs claimed for this application, abandoned before the respondent prepared responding application materials, exceed the likely costs award after a fully contested application decided on the merits.

[6] The respondent claims $1,800 in costs for preparation of its costs materials. The most we would have awarded for serving and filing a Notice of Appearance would have been about $500. In light of the Respondent’s unreasonable approach to the costs issue, we decline to award any costs of this proceeding. We considered but decided against awarding costs of the costs issue to the applicant, on the basis of the respondent’s unreasonable approach to costs. However, this court’s case management process is still relatively new, and this is the first endorsement from this court sent to legal reporting services to address the costs of case management in this court. In the circumstances, we award no costs of the costs issue before us.

[7] Order to go that there be no costs of this abandoned application, and no costs of the motion for costs.

Aston J.

D.L. Corbett J.

Nishikawa J.

Released: October 8, 2021