Lawyer Monthly Magazine -December 2019 Edition

Class actions are an important role in the civil justice system; they allow a group of people to come together to fight against often large corporations in a way that no individual could, alone. Promoting such judicial economy is no easy feat, however, as we learn when speaking to Celeste Poltak. Oftentimes it takes years, maybe up to ten, for a conclusion to be drawn and after years of appeals and to-ing and fro-ing. Speaking to Celeste this month, she explains more about class actions and the important role they place in the justice system. Celeste Poltak An Interview With... Class Action Suits And The Role They Play In Our Justice System that they do not have to pay any legal fees unless they are successful, they have protection from costs awards through class counsel or indemnifiers and they can play as little or as large a role as they wish in the litigation. What challenges may you face along the way? One of the greatest challenges in this area is that by definition, you are acting for a group of persons who has been subjected to mass or common harm. When a group experiences that on account of their race, socio-economic status or disability, the obvious outcome of litigation is not always just financial restitution like it might be with traditional civil litigation. No two class actions are ever the same, so the end game goal for class members can be very far-reaching: public apologies, future programmatic relief, remediation, charitable donations or simply pushing the boundaries of establishing new law. The one thing all class actions tend to have in common is that they rarely have speedy resolve. The issues are often ones of first impression and the stakes are high for both sides so virtually everything gets appealed. You have to be prepared to throw How do class actions play an increasingly important role in the civil justice system? The advent of class proceedings legislation has been one of the greatest equalizers our justice systemhas experienced in the last two decades. Before this regime, many meritorious cases were left to languish because they were deemed completely financially impossible for individuals to bring on their own against well financed corporations or governments. Access to our civil courts has become out of reach financially for the overwhelmingly majority of Canadians. The Supreme Court of Canada has itself gone so far as to coin protracted litigation the “sport of kings”, in the sense only kings can now afford it. This is an untenable reality in the year 2019 in this country. The very purpose of the class proceedings regime is designed to increase access to justice and promote judicial economy. So now a class of persons who have been harmed as a group can aggregate their claims together, which goes a long way in levelling the playing field in a way an individual acting on their own for just their personal loss never could. The ancillary benefit for class members is 22 WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | DEC 2019 My Legal Life By Celeste Poltak, Koskie Minsky LLP