Against my better judgment, I checked in on the Twitter account of undischarged bankrupt Patrick Ross and, unsurprisingly, there was nothing about the last several days of Rule 4.33 blog posts here, despite the fact that we all know Patrick reads this blog and loves to tweet snarky, condescending insults so let's summarize how this is going to go down.
As we have all learned recently, Alberta's "Drop Dead" Rule 4.33 has nothing to do with a lawsuit's merits, or the childish and frivolous malice of the Plaintiff, or anything like that. It is, rather, a purely and exclusively time-based rule -- if a civil claim has been stalled for more than three years, then upon application by the Defendant, the Alberta court is required to dismiss that action for long delay. Nothing else is taken into consideration other than the three-year deadline. Which Patrick is well past by now so, yes, he's going down. So what is the point of documenting his childish bragging over all that time?
I'm glad you asked.
All of that is being collected and will be placed before the court to justify a significant subsequent costs award, as I have shown before:
Note point 3. above, which clearly shows that, yes, a judge can order full costs if the Plaintiff's conduct is seen as "an abuse of process," and if you don't think more than three years of Patrick bragging about this filing while refusing to move it forward does not fall into that category, you have not been paying attention.
Also, there should be other surprises for Patrick when he shows up for that hearing, but I'll keep all that to myself for now.
BONUS TRACK: One of Patrick's most damning and self-destructive tweets would be this one:
wherein Patrick openly admits, back in 2023, that he is failing to advance his lawsuit, then continues to do nothing for another almost three years. I guarantee that tweet will be front and centre in my costs submission.
PATRICK'S POSSIBLE RESPONSES: It's worth pondering (or even predicting) how Patrick will fight back against this application, given that he has very little latitude. We already know about the Rule 4.33 three year time limit, and we know from the case's Procedure Record that Patrick has done absolutely nothing for well over three years, which means that the court is required to dismiss his lawsuit. So what are his possible defenses?
As I've mentioned before, there is a short list of very specific exceptions under which the court must not dismiss a lawsuit pursuant to Rule 4.33:
That's it, and I can assure you that none of the above are in play here. There is no authorized court order to pause this case, there is definitely no mutual agreement to put it on hold, and neither party has done anything that could be considered "active participation" that would have resulted in a "significant advance" in the case.
And that's it ... that's all Patrick can argue, and none of it holds. So what will he do? Who knows?
7 comments:
I wonder if Patrick has been bragging to his siblings about how he's going to get a windfall from that lawsuit, and whether he's now going to admit to them that not only will he get nothing, but he'll have to pay substantial costs. From what I hear, none of them like Patrick much because of what he's put them through for the last 15 years, and this isn't going to make him any more popular. Someone should drop a note to his siblings and fill them in on what's going on.
Now that you've filed that application, you still have to serve Patrick with it, right? Do you know how you're going to do that given that he refuses to admit where he is?
Anon @ 11:24 AM: Patrick is welcome to make service as difficult as possible, which means that not only will process servers be showing up at Casa Ross (where his sister now resides), but any additional expenses to effect service will be added to the costs I'm asking for. If Patrick wants to make this difficult, he's only digging a deeper hole, and he'll be dragging his sister into it as well.
Don't you have substitute service approved for communicating with the Twatster?
Somehow, I doubt that Patrick _will_ file a response, or bother to show up in court.
I presume the courts have some kind of mechanism to deal with situations where a party fails to (or refuses to) provide a correct address for service that would allow your motion to move forward.
Anon @ 3:22 PM: I had sub service for him related to the other file -- my collections enforcement against him. I don't think it will be hard to track him down; the court is going to have very little patience with him given his history of disobeying court orders.
Anon @ 3:44 PM: I don't think it matters what Patrick does at this point; he's run out of road related to this issue. The smartest thing he could do right now is to drop his own lawsuit to minimize the costs he will have to pay. Anything else will simply make things worse for him. He's going to lose, and he's going to have to pay. How bad it gets depends on the stupidity of his choices.
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