{"id":68599,"date":"2016-01-10T20:50:20","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T01:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=68599"},"modified":"2025-01-19T01:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T06:59:20","slug":"lawyers-who-fought-harpers-top-court-appointment-fight-paltry-costs-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/01\/10\/lawyers-who-fought-harpers-top-court-appointment-fight-paltry-costs-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers who fought Harper’s top court appointment fight ‘paltry’ costs award"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Untitled<\/a><\/p>\n

TORONTO\u2014The lawyers who challenged the Harper government’s ultimately aborted appointment of Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada go before a court on Monday to argue they should be fully reimbursed for their efforts.<\/p>\n

In filings with the Federal Court of Appeal, Rocco Galati argues he deserves to be compensated for what he calls his \u201cexceptional\u201d battle to defend the integrity of the country’s Constitution and judicial system.<\/p>\n

Citizens have a constitutional entitlement to legal-cost awards if they successfully challenge legislation or government action that goes to the \u201carchitecture of the Constitution\u201d and where they derive no personal benefit, Galati says.<\/p>\n

Denying an award in such circumstances would amount to a \u201cdenial to the constitutional right not only to a fair and independent judiciary but also access to a fair and independent judiciary,\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n

In 2013, the former Conservative government under then-prime minister Stephen Harper appointed Marc Nadon to the country’s top court. Galati challenged the eligibility of the Federal Court of Appeal judge to fill one of the three high court seats reserved for Quebec.<\/p>\n

However, he agreed to put his challenge on hold when the government referred the issue to the Supreme Court, which then scuttled Nadon’s appointment, rendering the Galati fight moot.<\/p>\n

For his efforts, Galati asked for ,706.<\/p>\n

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54\u2014based on a charge of 0 an hour he says is reasonable for a lawyer with his experience.<\/p>\n

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Lawyer Paul Slansky wanted $16,769.20 for work he did for the Constitutional Rights Centre in helping Galati fight Nadon’s appointment.<\/p>\n

Instead, in December 2014, Federal Court Judge Russel Zinn awarded the two lawyers a total of $5,000 to be split between them. Zinn found Galati’s challenge, while important and potentially complicated, had been short-circuited by the Supreme Court reference\u2014a position taken by the federal government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mere filing of it appears to have had the desired result,\u201d Zinn said in his judgment.<\/p>\n

Slansky called Zinn’s \u201cpaltry\u201d award a \u201cslap in the face\u201d and said the Crown’s arguments\u2014including that the lawyers are simply looking for a \u201cwindfall\u201d\u2014are simply wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re taking the position that, ‘Oh, we didn’t even win because in the end it was won in the Supreme Court in the reference’,\u201d Slansky said. \u201cBut there would never had been a reference without our application.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zinn’s decision, if it were to stand, would create \u201csignificant disincentive\u201d to take cases to court purely in the public interest, he said.<\/p>\n

Galati who denounced Zinn’s cost-award as bizarre and an \u201caffront to the rule of law,\u201d maintains in his appeal that the judge was legally wrong on several counts to reject his bill in a case he called \u201crare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among other things, Zinn was mistaken in finding no constitutional right to costs exists in such cases, and to find at least some of the billed hours were excessive, he argues.<\/p>\n

Galati, who says the hours he put in dealing with the parties and preparing for case-management conferences were \u201cindisputable,\u201d also faults Zinn for giving no substantive reasons for deciding to award the lawyers ,000.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

He also says nothing prevents a self-represented litigant from claiming costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO\u2014The lawyers who challenged the Harper government’s ultimately aborted appointment of Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada go …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":65578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-68599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-original","mauthors-colin-perkel","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285643,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68599\/revisions\/285643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}