Judge orders Brampton to release lawsuit documents by Nov. 30

Ruling follows allegations city has been putting off developer’s $28.5M lawsuit by dragging its heels on answering questions and releasing documents.

Thestar.com
Nov. 13, 2015
By San Grewal

Brampton has until Nov. 30 to answer outstanding pre-trial questions and release documents in a $28.5-million lawsuit against the city, a judge has ordered.

The ruling follows allegations brought before the Superior Court that the city is delaying the case, which was launched four years ago.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” lawyer Stuart Svonkin, representing the plantiff in the case, developer Inzola Group, argued before Justice David Edwards on Friday.

There is still no trial set for the lawsuit, filed over the bidding process for a controversial $500 million development, which includes allegations that staff misled city council about the nature of the deal. A trial isn’t usually put in the queue for a court date until answers to pre-trial questions have been provided and relevant documents released.

The lawsuit alleges that Inzola was unfairly disqualified from bidding on the project and that staff and former mayor Susan Fennell were biased in favour of the bid winner, Dominus Construction.

The city denies all of the lawsuit’s allegations, which have not been proven in court. Dominus is not accused of any wrongdoing in the case and has said that it followed all the rules of the bidding process.

Inzola’s lawyers had asked the court to force the city to answer outstanding questions and produce documents within 10 days of Friday’s hearing.

“The delay in this case is significant; it’s been a pattern,” Svonkin alleged. He said the city has taken “years” to respond fully and said he was “asking the court to mitigate some of the harm” caused by the delay.

While Edwards ordered the city to respond by the end of the month, he did rule against one of Inzola’s key requests: a trial will not yet be “set down,” or placed in the queue for a date.

The city’s lawyer, Elizabeth Bowker, asked by Edwards why she opposed the request to expedite the case, responded: “On principle,” and cited case law that established trials should not be set down until after pre-trial procedures are concluded.

Svonkin had argued that the city “does not have a legitimate interest in delaying the progress of this case,” and that it should be expedited because there is a “public interest” involved. He outlined about two dozen alleged delays by the city that have kept the case from getting to trial, including numerous missed deadlines.

Denying the allegations, Bowker acknowledged that the action has been going on for four years, but said the suggestion of deliberate delays “Is simply, completely unfounded.”

Bowker said many of the hundreds of questions Inzola has asked in the case were not relevant or could not be answered until third parties consented. She also said it is time-consuming to arrange for current and former city staff to answer many of the questions, and that producing thousands of documents has also been time consuming.

Edwards dismissed Bowker’s attempt to recover costs due to Inzola’s motion, for what she described as an attempt “to make allegations in public that were designed to be embarrassing.

The city was awarded $2,000 in ordinary costs to defend the motion’s unsuccessful attempt to initiate the trial. It’s not clear when the trial will begin.