As Ontario litigants will have been told by their lawyers, and
prospective litigants likely will have learned from news coverage,
Ontario courts are now closed to all but demonstrably urgent
matters. To a large extent, matters considered by the court to be
urgent will likely relate to family law issues and rarely to
commercial disputes.
In many cases, defendants in commercial litigation cases will
consider this to be something of a silver lining around their
situations generally. Most defendants are in no hurry to get to
trial and will regard the procedural delay currently being
experienced as something of an advantage. Indeed, in my experience
defendants typically seek out ways of delaying what might be an
adverse result in the hope, for example, that the party suing them
will lose interest or go out of business before the final reckoning
takes place.
