Searching for civil court records in Ontario.
Over a year ago I read in a newspaper story whereby a person filed a
"Statement of Claim" for a civil action in a "Superior Court" in
Ontario, Canada.
Yesterday I went to the following website looking for any updates on
the case, such as a Judgment, or at least expecting to find the full
Statement of Claim as had been filed.
http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/scj.htm
The website does not have any statement of claims for any civil cases. It
does have Judgments, or links to same.
If the case is still in flux and not yet reached the Judgment phase
then how does one follow the proceedings?
How does one find the Statement of Claim?
If contested, the defendants would have filed a Statement of Defense by now.
How does one find the Statement of Defense?
I telephoned someone at the defendant municipality and they said *I*
would have to know which of a dozen Ontario Superior Courts across the
big land is handling the case and then visit *that* courthouse in
person. But since each Ontario Superior Court keeps their separate
records locally AND since I don't know exactly which instance of the
Ontario Superior Courts is hearing the case that suggestion is not
very practical. There must be a better way.
I know only what was reported in the newspaper. The plaintiff's name,
the defendant municipality, the named co-defendant employees. I do
*not* know the lawyers representing the parties. The plaintiff's
name is fairly "common".
Furthermore, the plaintiff's public name may be different from their official
legal name. I.e. Some long foreign names are anglicized to become "Johnny".
It is in the public interest to follow such a case involving a municipality
being sued. |
Clarification of Question by
grthumongous-ga
on
25 Feb 2005 19:13 PST
Firstly, let me say I have found the correct court by the highly
effective but tedious method of trial and error. So I will be
cancelling the question.
pafalafa,
The newspapers covered the original "story" but as is typical they did
not stay with it as I have seen no recent updates in print. I did
search the internet using the Gword Sengine but there is nothing new
that *I* could find. Maybe that's because courts in Canada move at a
snail's pace and the civil trial has not yet occurred---thus nothing
new for newspapers to report.
I also contacted one of the Canadian case-law sites but they said that
they only post Judgments and not cases still wending their way thru
the system.
4keith, thanks for your keen interest.
If you feel like mentioning the names of those other court-related databases
you contemplated that would be welcome.
Yes, I did do searches on all the search criteria that I had (as you
mention) but it turns out the trick is, its so twentieth century its
gut-splitting, you just have to select the correct court.
I found it after only 210 miles.
I will give you 14 hours before I EXPIRE (and close down) the question.
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