A mad dash by law firms to file civil lawsuits in Manitoba before new restrictions took effect last month has buried the court system under hundreds of cases and overwhelmed staff who file legal paperwork.
At least 480 civil lawsuits have been filed in the Manitoba Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg since Sept. 8. The number of cases is a result of amended regulations under the Limitations of Actions Act, which took effect Sept. 30, 2022, that impose a two-year limitation period on most civil lawsuits. The old legislation allowed for limitation periods of one to 10 years depending on the incident.
The date marked the last opportunity for most civil claims that were “discovered” before Sept. 30, 2022 to be filed.
Lawyer Jeffrey King explained the two-year limitation begins the day a person realizes an injury, loss or damage has occurred, not when the incident happened.
“It’s a shift from when something arose or when it happened, to when a person discovered it or when they learned that it happened,” said King, who specializes in civil litigation at PKF Lawyers in Winnipeg.
Once the regulations took effect Sept. 30, 2022, most civil lawsuits had to be filed within two years of the day of discovery, not the day the incident took place.
There continues to be no limitation period for cases that involve minors or people with disabilities, or when a sexual assault has occurred.
Because of the impending deadline for many cases, the number of lawsuits that were filed skyrocketed and created substantially more work for staff.
“It was ridiculous,” said one Court of King’s Bench staffer of the hundreds of lawsuits filed in recent weeks.
The Free Press is not naming the worker, who said the number of statements of claim filed ahead of the legislative deadline increased at least tenfold over the average.
In her time working at the courts, she has never seen so many claims filed in such a short period. The staffer wonders why so many law firms waited to file at the last minute.
Manitoba Courts spokeswoman Aimee Fortier agreed that amendments to the legislation are “quite likely” related to the spike in lawsuits filed.
King said heel-dragging may have been at play, but most lawsuits take time to organize before filing, which created the bottleneck at the deadline.
The change in legislation falls in line with other provinces that have similar time periods which is a net-positive for the legal community, King said.
Ontario and B.C. have similar two-year limitations periods.
“It makes sense that the focus is on when a claim is discovered, as opposed to when an action would have occurred,” King said. “It’s a positive step.”
— with files from Erik Pindera
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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