CIVIL PROCEDURE - Appeals - Orders necessary to safeguard rights of parties

Motion by the respondents for orders expediting the appeals. Motion by the former counsel of the appellants for leave to intervene as an added party on the respondents’ motion and request a delay of that motion until the disposition of a proceeding initiated by the lawyers in the Superior Court. The vendors appealed 2020 trial orders granting the purchasers specific performance of an agreement of purchase and sale for a residential property and ordering the vendors to deliver up vacant possession of the property. The purchasers took possession of the property. They did not intend to sell their previous home until the disposition of the appeals. The sale of the property had not closed. The vendors’ lawyers had now commenced a Superior Court proceeding to vary the specific performance orders and the award of costs to the purchasers and broker as it now appeared that the purchase price would not cover all claims payable from the proceeds. 

HELD: Respondents’ motion allowed. Lawyers’ motion dismissed. The vendors offered no persuasive reason to oppose setting an early date for the hearing of the appeals. The appeals were to be heard on Feb. 10, 2021, for two hours. The court was also not persuaded that the vendors’ former lawyers should be granted leave to intervene in this court. The proper forum for their submissions on the priorities dispute was the Superior Court. By setting an early hearing date for the appeals, the court attempted to fix a timeframe in which the parties should resolve their priorities dispute in the Superior Court. The longer that priorities dispute could fester, the more disproportionate the legal costs would become to the amount truly in dispute.

Dhatt v. Beer, [2020] O.J. No. 5425, Ontario Court of Appeal, D.M. Brown J.A., December 11, 2020. Digest No. TLD-February12021008