Trial Adjourned After Plaintiff “Comedy of Errors” Leads to Lack of Medico-Legal Evidence
Reasons for judgement were published today by the BC Supreme Court, Vancouver Registry, granting a trial adjournment after a plaintiff failed to obtain needed medico-legal evidence.
In today’s case (Raniga v. Poirier) the Plaintiff was involved in a 2015 collision. The Defendant admitted fault. As the trial neared plaintiff’s counsel realizes they failed to obtain medico-legal evidence and could not in time for trial. The Defendant would not consent to adjournment but the court granted the requested despite the ‘comedy of errors‘ creating the situation. Despite the court being critical of the evidence and circumstances presented in favour of the request one of the key reasons in granting it was the failure of the Defendant to point to any real prejudice who simply relied on an affidavit of an administrative assistant at the defence firm who had “no personal knowledge of the matters set out in her affidavit“.
In declining to award the Defendant any costs the Court went so far as to say that despite the shortcomings of the circumstances leading to the request “It should have been obvious from the outset that an adjournment would be granted.”
In granting the adjournment Mr. Justice Kent provided the following reasons: