Well-run appeals : Du bon déroulement des appels

At that time, the Council’s Appeal Courts Committee recommended that the Honourable Jean Côté be asked to prepare a report on the procedures of appellate courts in Canada, with the objective of identifying best practices. [...] Most were killed by the indifference or opposition of the legal profession, or the misunderstanding or indifference of the judges. [...] That is developed further in Chapter 5. 14 See Chapter 5, Part E. OBJECTIVES 7 D. Access Includes Respondents Too Access to justice for the respondent involves speed of the appeal! If the appellant can appeal from a judgment and then neglect to do anything with the appeal for some years, then for those years the respondent has no certainty. [...] Appeals constantly throw precedent into the melting pot (especially coupled with the power of Courts of Appeal to reconsider past precedent), and so harm the public by heavily eroding certainty of the law. [...] Lord Woolf speaks of wars of attrition by use of interlocutory litigation, and delaying litigation where the defendant has more financial resources than the plaintiff.32 A war of attrition is almost irresistible if someone else is funding the munitions.