Case Planning Conference Transcripts Are Tough To Come By

BC Supreme Court  Rule 5-2(7) states that “proceedings at a case planning conference must be recorded, but no part of that recording may be made available to or used by any person without court order“.  The few cases released to date interpreting this rule have made it clear that the Court is reluctant to deviate from this fall back position.  Reasons for judgement were released today the BC Supreme Court, Nanaimo Registry, following this trend.
In today’s case (Darel v. Samy) a variety of orders were made at a case planning conference.  The Plaintiff applied for reasons to be published arging that these were desirable “for the intended purpose of bringing the “conduct” of the defendants “to light”. ”
Master Bouck rejected this request and in doing so provided the following brief reasons:
[5]             The plaintiff’s request for release of the transcript is denied for the reasons articulated in Parti v. Pokorny. Firstly, a transcript is not required to resolve any dispute about the terms of the case plan order. Second, there is no precedential value in any of the terms of the order. Third, the court does not issue reasons for judgment at the request of a party. And finally, the comments of a presider are not rulings or reasons.