Too little too late!

Woman’s 29-month wait for ruling ‘most regrettable,’ court says

Tracy Tyler, Legal Affairs Reporter
Sunday, August 14, 2011

For Jacqueline Spicer, the wait is over.

After 29 months, a Toronto judge finally issued a ruling awarding the mother of two $7,500 for legal costs in a custody dispute with her ex-husband.

Justice Susanne Goodman released her decision August 10, one day after a story about the delay was published on thestar.com.

The trial wrapped up in 2007 and Goodman released her judgment on support payments on November 21 2008. Still outstanding was the issue of Spicer's legal costs, which could also affect how the couple's property is divided.

“We were clearly disappointed in the awarded amount,” said Spicer, referring to herself and lawyer Joy Casey.

Spicer said her actual bills were $93,000 and they had asked the court to award $60,000.

In a letter to the editor of the Star, Roslyn Levine, executive legal officer to the office of Chief Justice Heather Smith of the Superior Court of Justice for Ontario, said the delay in issuing the costs order in Spicer’s case is “most regrettable.”
The court relies on judges and their staff to record and track decisions that are under reserve, but they might not always be recorded, tracked and reported in the same way, she said.

The court has an “excellent record” in tracking reserved judgments but tracking costs orders has not been as consistent, Levine added.

The Star asked Levine how many of the court’s decisions have been on reserve for longer than six months, the maximum suggested by the Canadian Judicial Council and Ontario's Courts of Justice Act.

Levine was also asked if the court could explain why at least three of Goodman's decisions — Spicer's costs order and two judgments in unrelated cases — were on reserve for more than two years.

Levine declined to answer the questions.

In an email, Levine said her letter to the Star provides a comprehensive response to the story.

“I do not plan to comment any further,” she said.

One Toronto family law lawyer said Goodman personally isn't the problem, describing her as “one of the most dedicated, hard-working and compassionate” judges on the court.

The problem is systemic and the court’s regional senior judge in Toronto has “ample” resources to fix it, the lawyer suggested. The regional senior judge oversees the assignment of judges to cases and could arguably free up a judge who needs time to complete a ruling.

That judge is Justice Edward Then, who, perhaps more than others, might have sympathy for a colleague who has fallen behind with a judgment.

After all, Then himself once took three years to issue a ruling. That was his judgment in a special inquiry he launched in 2004 into whether he had been misled about journalist Stevie Cameron’s role in a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation. It was looking at alleged kickbacks in the federal government's purchase of helicopters and Airbus jets.

The Mounties had assigned Cameron a code number, but she said she was never a confidential informant. In July 2007, Justice Then released his decision, finding that an RCMP chief superintendent who was heading the probe had acted in good faith in according Cameron informer status.