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SNAFU goes to Court
At the beginning of the week we explained the SNAFU at the OSMV affecting some people with old IRPs. The lawyers who are running the Sivia appeal had a number of their old IRP cases added to the court list in BC Supreme Court yesterday afternoon to argue that the orders should still be in place and their clients should not be prohibited from driving.
Bearing in mind the complexity of the issues and the court time needed to make the arguments, the matter was adjourned to May 2nd when there will be sufficient time to make the argument.
Available interim remedy for old IRPs
Of course, adjourning the case to May 2nd presents other difficulties. It’s fundamentally unfair to re-instate driving prohibitions at this point when the case can’t be argued due to a lack of court time. To address this, the court granted further interim stays of the driving prohibitions in those cases. These interim stays last until May 2.
That sounds fine, until you realize that there’s a catch. The process of obtaining the actual order can take nearly two weeks.
The interim stays do not bind the OSMV until the actual paper order is drafted, signed by both lawyers, filed in the court registry ($80 filing fee) and done so with an accompanying letter explaining why an order is required on a rush basis. Then it moves its way through court, which can take a few days, before being approved and placed in a stack of other orders to be picked up. Then it must be served on the OSMV, which will update their computer with the information, usually by the following morning.
The timeline
If we were to draft an order for a client this afternoon, we could have it sent by courier to the Government lawyers before the end of the day. Because of the long weekend, the order would arrive in their office Tuesday April 22, 2014. The order would arrive back in our office on April 23 or 24, 2014 and we would file it either that day or the following, depending on when it arrives via courier. On average we see a 5 business day turnaround from the time orders are filed to when they show up in the stack to be collected having been approved by the court. This takes us to April 29 or 30, 2014. Then the OSMV will update the computer system. This would happen on April 30 or May 1, 2014.
At that point the driving prohibition would be back in abeyance. And the following day the court will hear arguments on the main case.
Pros, cons and other considerations
It is possible that our timeline is overly pessimistic. Sometimes these things happen more quickly. Our point is that we want people to understand that it could take that long. Also:
a) It is possible that the court will conclude that the orders approved before May 2, 2014, are extended from that period thereby avoiding the process of having a new order filed.
b) It is possible that the court will say that the old orders have expired and new orders need to be filed, which will then take us to a similar timeline as we outlined above, but not getting started until May thereby delaying the process.
c) It is possible that the court will agree that the old orders that speak of 30-days post Sivia are still in place and that the OSMV was wrong to have re-instated the driving prohibitions.
d) It is possible that the court will do something that we haven’t anticipated.
In the event that clients instruct us to rush to get a new order, there are legal costs and filing fees. We expect that the bill would be just under $400 including taxes. In the event that the court elects option “b” you’ll be looking at paying that a second time.
More money than time? More time than money?
Our feeling is that it’s better to wait to May 2, 2014 to see what happens. That’s not necessarily our advice, however. We’ve found with the IRP scheme that your best course of action is to challenge the IRP every step of the way if possible.
Sometimes this isn’t possible. Other times it would be a financial disaster. But if you consider that all of the people who sought stays of old IRPs can expect to avoid the RDP and Interlock because they postponed and continued to challenge their IRP, it suggests that it’s worthwhile to keep going.
If you want to spend the money, give us a call and we’ll get going. We can get the stay reinstated, as described above.
If you want to wait until May 2nd to see what happens with these old IRPs, we think you’re making a logical choice.