Court File and Parties

COURT FILE NO.: CV-15-526680 DATE: 20220308

ONTARIO SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE

RE: Canadian Standards Association, Plaintiff -and- P.S. Knight Co. Ltd. and Gordon Knight, Defendants

BEFORE: FL Myers J

COUNSEL: Wudassie Tamrat, for the plaintiff Gordon Knight, representing himself

HEARD: March 8, 2022

CASE CONFERENCE ENDORSEMENT

[1] The plaintiff sues Mr. Knight and the corporate defendant for defamation. A trial is scheduled for the end of May. Two prior trial dates have been cancelled because the court did not have a trial judge available.

[2] Mr. Knight has come to believe that the court and the plaintiff are part of a larger conspiracy to harass him. He says there are up to ten other claims against him and one against his elderly father. He believes that the court’s inability to schedule the trial last year is evidence of deliberate collusion between the court and the plaintiff because the plaintiff is a federal crown corporation and the court is also a branch of the Government of Canada.

[3] During the brief case conference today, Mr. Knight continually referred to counsel for the plaintiff as my “colleague” and my “counsel”. Ms. Tamrat is an associate at Gowling WLG, the lawyers for the plaintiff. She is neither my colleague nor my counsel.

[4] I tried to explain to Mr. Knight that the court is a constitutional entity. Judges are independent of the other branches of government. I am not a member of the Civil Service of Canada.

[5] Judicial independence is a constitutional norm in Canada. I am afraid that Mr. Knight was quite unwilling to hear me. I gave brief thought to the notion that alleging that the judge is a colleague of plaintiff’s counsel may well amount to an assertion of bias and ultimately to an act of contempt of court if continued despite correction. In my view, it better serves justice and the parties to make these points transparently and dispassionately in an endorsement rather than becoming embroiled in a conspiracy theory at this time.

[6] As a result of Mr. Knight’s annoyance with the lack of scheduling of a new trial date, he unleashed a computer attack on the plaintiff’s counsel and the court. Over a span of a few days last month, he sent over 20,000 emails each with 50 letters enclosed demanding the scheduling of the trial date. I know this from Mr. Knight’s own blog posting.

[7] Ultimately the court scheduled the trial. There is no point debating whether Mr. Knight’s email blitz contributed to that ordinary process.

[8] This case conference dealt with a slightly different point.

[9] In preparing for the trial last year, Mr. Knight says that the court refused to give him access to Caselines. He incorrectly concludes that this was a further collusive effort to prevent him from filing his material on the public court record. Caselines however, is not the court file. Court filing is done through the Civil Submissions Online portal. Caselines is a convenience for presenting electronic material to a judge during a hearing. There are two distinct and parallel systems. They are not connected. Materials need to be separately filed in each. While having two different systems is not very efficient, for now it is what is available. Having an online filing system and Caselines for hearings is distinctly more user-friendly and helpful than the processes that existed at the beginning of the pandemic.

[10] A problem with uploading to Caselines would certainly make the trial more difficult. But it has no bearing on whether the defendants’ material is filed in the publicly accessible court record. It does not suppress a party’s right to file or adduce evidence.

[11] To assist Mr. Knight with Caselines, Mr. Justice Diamond directed the plaintiff’s counsel to upload Mr. Knight’s material to Caselines for him prior to an earlier scheduled trial date. In his blog, Mr. Knight characterizes this as a requirement that he file his material through the plaintiff. He writes in his blog:

“…the Civil Service running the Court wouldn’t allow us to file anything at all in our defence in the usual manner. In other words, to be considered official, anything we send to Court must be filed through the Civil Service’ lawyers.”

[12] Mr. Knight confounds the plaintiff’s lawyers with the court under the generic characterization of “the Civil Service” and then he confuses Caselines with court filing.

[13] Now, Mr. Knight demands that the plaintiff’s lawyer upload his 20,000 or so emails to CaseLines for him purportedly as directed by Diamond J. Gowlings has blocked Mr. Knight’s emails and it is unwilling to open any of his attachments for fear of malware. Mr. Knight responds that if the court’s colleagues do not open his emails, he cannot be required to open emails from the court. That is his view of “equal justice”.

[14] Justice Diamond directed:

Defendants are having difficulty uploading their material on to Caselines. Plaintiff’s counsel shall assist by uploading the defendants’ materials to Caselines by the end of this week…

[15] Mr. Knight objects to Justice Diamond characterizing the issue as the defendants “having difficulty” with Caselines. He submits that the court deliberately barred them from accessing Caselines and from that he draws that Justice Diamond’s direction to assist must extend beyond the end of the week that he mentioned.

[16] I will not parse the words of Justice Diamond’s endorsement last year to try to determine if his direction for counsel to aid Mr. Knight was time limited or continues to apply. As I said during the case conference, it does not matter. Whether the court’s direction was intended to be time limited or to continue does not address the current situation.

[17] The trial is now scheduled. Mr. Knight confirmed expressly to me that all of his material for the trial is already uploaded to Caselines (by Gowlings). The deadlines for filing material for the trial have passed. Mr. Knight’s demand letters seeking a trial date are not evidence for the trial. There is no purpose in uploading them to Caselines except to inconvenience Gowlings and to overload the Caselines trial bundle or folder.

[18] Accordingly, I make no order about what Gowlings is or is not to do with the emails it received except to direct that they are not to upload them to Caselines. In light of the word games played with Justice Diamond’s endorsement, I direct that Gowlings has no continuing obligation to upload material to Caselines for Mr. Knight or the corporate defendant for the upcoming trial.

[19] If the defendants need help with Caselines or distinguishing Caselines from the court file, I direct them to the following very useful resources:

• Supplementary Notice to the Profession and Litigants in Civil and Family Matters Regarding the Caselines Pilot, E-Filing, and Fee Payment
• Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about CaseLines
• CaseLines Tips for Counsel and Self-Represented Parties

[20] If the defendants wish to upload further documents to Caselines during the trial and find themselves unable to do so, they may approach the trial judge. The court will be quick to assist self-represented litigants to navigate its technical systems for appropriate purposes.

[21] If Mr. Knight chooses not to open emails from the court, the defendants do so at their own risk. The court communicates with parties for an upcoming trial by email. I do not know if a pretrial conference has been held or if another one might be convened before the trial for trial management purposes.

[22] There may also be important information to be conveyed concerning the format for the trial especially with society re-opening at this time. It is very much in the defendants’ interests to ensure that they receive information to be provided to them for the trial.

[23] I am not asked today to schedule any hearings as a result of the abusive email campaign conducted by Mr. Knight against the plaintiff’s counsel and the court. However, the defendants should be warned that they are not entitled to take malicious actions against any other party or the court. I do not know if there will be any further upshot from the prior episode. But I would expect any repetition of this type of conduct to induce a serious response.

FL Myers J Date of Release: March 8, 2022