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    Suspending The Ability To Litigate by Robert Mcglashan, Mccague Borlack LLP

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    The document discusses strategies for dealing with difficult and tenacious litigants. It summarizes a court case, Wong v. Wong, where the court prohibited further litigation between parties without leave, even though the plaintiff did not meet the criteria of a vexatious litigant. The decision in Wong v. Wong has been applied in another case, Brown v. Radmore and Strone Restorations et al., where the court similarly prohibited a plaintiff from initiating further actions without leave due to their tenacious litigation. The document concludes that orders prohibiting litigation without leave under Wong v. Wong provide an important alternative to vexatious proceeding orders for defendants facing difficult litigants.

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    Suspending The Ability To Litigate by Robert Mcglashan, Mccague Borlack LLP

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    hine1009
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    The document discusses strategies for dealing with difficult and tenacious litigants. It summarizes a court case, Wong v. Wong, where the court prohibited further litigation between parties without leave, even though the plaintiff did not meet the criteria of a vexatious litigant. The decision in Wong v. Wong has been applied in another case, Brown v. Radmore and Strone Restorations et al., where the court similarly prohibited a plaintiff from initiating further actions without leave due to their tenacious litigation. The document concludes that orders prohibiting litigation without leave under Wong v. Wong provide an important alternative to vexatious proceeding orders for defendants facing difficult litigants.

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    The document discusses strategies for dealing with difficult and tenacious litigants. It summarizes a court case, Wong v. Wong, where the court prohibited further litigation between parties without leave, even though the plaintiff did not meet the criteria of a vexatious litigant. The decision in Wong v. Wong has been applied in another case, Brown v. Radmore and Strone Restorations et al., where the court similarly prohibited a plaintiff from initiating further actions without leave due to their tenacious litigation. The document concludes that orders prohibiting litigation without leave under Wong v. Wong provide an important alternative to vexatious proceeding orders for defendants facing difficult litigants.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    37 views2 pages

    Suspending The Ability To Litigate by Robert Mcglashan, Mccague Borlack LLP

    Uploaded by

    hine1009
    The document discusses strategies for dealing with difficult and tenacious litigants. It summarizes a court case, Wong v. Wong, where the court prohibited further litigation between parties without leave, even though the plaintiff did not meet the criteria of a vexatious litigant. The decision in Wong v. Wong has been applied in another case, Brown v. Radmore and Strone Restorations et al., where the court similarly prohibited a plaintiff from initiating further actions without leave due to their tenacious litigation. The document concludes that orders prohibiting litigation without leave under Wong v. Wong provide an important alternative to vexatious proceeding orders for defendants facing difficult litigants.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 2

    Suspending the Ability to Litigate

    By Robert McGlashan, McCague Borlack LLP

    Difficult and tenacious litigants are individuals who are exceedingly dedicated and vindictive in
    their litigation. They are individuals who often have multiple actions against the same or
    different individuals or corporate entities, frequent appeals, actions against employees of
    corporations, actions that are obviously not going to succeed, frequent interlocutory motions and
    failing to pay costs. These individuals in many cases, are unrepresented or if represented, they
    may frequently change counsel. This type of litigant will become a source of frustration and for
    opposing counsel and they will increase the cost of the litigation. It is important for counsel to
    have a strategy to dispose of this type of claim expeditiously.

    One solution when dealing with this type of litigant is to seek, pursuant to section 140 of the
    Courts of Justice Act, an order declaring the individual to be vexatious and order that the
    individual not be allowed to initiate any further litigation without leave. However, this type of
    order is rare, because of the severely limiting nature of the relief. Fortunately, there are
    alternatives to prevent difficult and tenacious litigants from perpetrating an abuse of process

    Wong v. Wong

    In the case of Wong v. Wong [2006] O.J. No. 5479, Justice Granger for the Ontario Superior
    Court clearly articulated that the court is willing to make an order prohibiting a tenacious and
    determined litigant from initiating any further proceedings against certain parties without the
    leave of the court in circumstances where the plaintiff does not meet the criteria of vexatious but
    the court still has reason to be suspicious of the plaintiff’s conduct.

    In Wong v. Wong, the plaintiff, Billie Wong, had initiated five civil actions against her husband.
    The actions largely concerned allegations of wrongful imprisonment and allegations with respect
    to joint debts. The defendant, Dr. Wong, brought an application to have his wife declared
    vexatious and obtain an order prohibiting her from initiating any further litigation.

    Justice Granger noted that notwithstanding suspicions of Ms. Wong’s conduct, he was unable to
    make a finding that Ms. Wong was a vexatious litigant. However, Justice Granger held that
    further litigation between the parties had to be controlled. In order to achieve this result, Justice
    Granger ordered that both parties be restrained from instituting any further action against each
    other and/or taking any interlocutory steps without leave of a judge of the Superior Court of
    Justice pending the trial of the matter.

    Justice Granger held that Mrs. Wong did not meet the criteria of vexatious litigant, but that the
    Court was suspicious that Mrs. Wong was attempting to continue, as long as possible, her battle
    with Dr. Wong. In these circumstances, the Court was prepared to step in and control the process
    between the litigants.
    Application of Wong: Brown v. Radmore and Strone Restorations et al.

    The decision of Wong v. Wong has been applied in Brown v. Radmore and Strone Restorations et
    al. (“Brown”) (Unreported, court file number 07-4125-SR).In Brown, the plaintiff had been
    retained by an independent contracting firm which in turn had been retained by Strone
    Restorations. The firm that retained the plaintiff did not pay for the work he had done because its
    partnership had broken up. The plaintiff sued Strone Restorations and others for unpaid fees. The
    plaintiff had no contract with Strone Restorations, but insisted that Strone Restorations pay him
    what they had contracted to pay the now defunct partnership. The plaintiff was self-represented
    and was very tenacious in his litigation against Strone Restorations and made several attempts to
    obtain garnishments or put liens on properties that Strone Restorations’ had sold to other parties.
    Consequently there were several interlocutory motions and Strone Restorations was put to
    unnecessary expense.

    Strone Restorations was also successful in obtaining an order from Justice Ramsay of the Ontario
    Superior Court that the plaintiff not be allowed to initiate any further actions or interlocutory
    steps against Strone Restorations without the leave of the court.

    Conclusion

    Vexatious Proceeding orders pursuant to section 140 are very useful when dealing with difficult
    litigants, but very hard to obtain. The Wong v. Wong decision provides an alternative where the
    vexatious criteria are not met. This decision clearly provides an option for defendants in the face
    of difficult and tenacious litigants. These decisions allow these defendants to obtain orders
    prohibiting further litigation against them by these plaintiffs without leave. As such, these
    decisions are a very useful tool for litigators and their importance should not be neglected.

    *Published Ontario Bar Association Young Lawyers Newsletter April 2011

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