Introduction
Supreme Court Civil Rules, Rule 9-7, allows a party to a lawsuit to bring an application to proceed with a
summary trial before the scheduled trial date. Summary trial can be a faster way to resolve a lawsuit, which can save significant resources.
In this newseries of blog posts, we will discuss the summary trial process. In addition, in later posts, we will discuss relevant caselaw and matters to be considered before choosing to proceed with a summary trial.
Are Pleadings Closed?
The first question for all the litigants considering a summary trial is whether it is permitted under the Rules. According to Rule 9-7(2), a party may only bring a summary trial application in one of four circumstances:
1. an action in which a Response to Civil Claim has been filed;
2. a proceeding that has been transferred to the trial list under Rule 22-1 (7) (d);
Essentially, this means a party cannot initiate a summary trial unless a response to the claim has been filed. The court requires the initial pleadings stage to be concluded before allowing a party to apply for a summary trial.
Timing of Summary Trials and Service
The rules governing summary trial applications set out different requirements for timing and service than what they require for ordinary chambers applications.
Rule 9-7(3) states that a summary trial application must be heard at least 42 days before the scheduled trial date.
If a trial date is already fixed, one should be careful to bring the application on time. Even when not planning to bring a summary trial application at the time of fixing a trial date, marking one’s calendar to note the last day of a possible summary trial is advised.
In addition, as with any other application in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, a summary trial application must be filed and served a certain number of days before the application date. In the case of summary trials, the generally applicable timelines for chambers applications do not apply.
Instead, Rule8-1(8) dictates that a summary trial application should be served “at least 12 business before the date set for the hearing of the application”. If one chooses to serve the opposing party by regular mail, one must be mindful of Rule 4-2(4). According to this rule, regular mail is deemed to be served “oneweek later on the same day of the week as the day of mailing or, if that deemed day of service is a Saturday or holiday, on the next day that is not a Saturday or holiday.”
Conclusion
Once one decides the Rules permit a summary trial application, the next question to be considered is that of what must be filed. We will address this question in our next blog post.