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Abuse of Process - In Relation to Other Doctrine
MORE CASES
Part 2
. Toronto (City) v. C.U.P.E., Local 79
In Toronto (City) v. C.U.P.E., Local 79 (SCC, 2003) the Supreme Court of Canada states a useful comparison between the three doctrines of issue estoppel, collateral attack and abuse of process - all revolving around the theme of procedural finality:(1) Issue Estoppel
23 Issue estoppel is a branch of res judicata (the other branch being cause of action estoppel), which precludes the relitigation of issues previously decided in court in another proceeding. For issue estoppel to be successfully invoked, three preconditions must be met: (1) the issue must be the same as the one decided in the prior decision; (2) the prior judicial decision must have been final; and (3) the parties to both proceedings must be the same, or their privies (Danyluk v. Ainsworth Technologies Inc., [2001] 2 S.C.R. 460, 2001 SCC 44, at para. 25, per Binnie J.). The final requirement, known as “mutuality”, has been largely abandoned in the United States and has been the subject of much academic and judicial debate there as well as in the United Kingdom and, to some extent, in this country. (See G. D. Watson, “Duplicative Litigation: Issue Estoppel, Abuse of Process and the Death of Mutuality” (1990), 69 Can. Bar Rev. 623, at pp. 648‑51.) In light of the different conclusions reached by the courts below on the applicability of issue estoppel, I think it is useful to examine that debate more closely.
24 The first two requirements of issue estoppel are met in this case. The final requirement of mutuality of parties has not been met. In the original criminal case, the lis was between Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada and Glenn Oliver. In the arbitration, the parties were CUPE and the City of Toronto, Oliver’s employer. It is unnecessary to decide whether Oliver and CUPE should reasonably be viewed as privies for the purpose of the application of the mutuality requirement since it is clear that the Crown, acting as prosecutor in the criminal case, is not privy with the City of Toronto, nor would it be with a provincial, rather than a municipal, employer (as in the Ontario v. O.P.S.E.U. case, released concurrently).
25 There has been much academic criticism of the mutuality requirement of the doctrine of issue estoppel. In his article, Professor Watson, supra, argues that explicitly abolishing the mutuality requirement, as has been done in the United States, would both reduce confusion in the law and remove the possibility that a strict application of issue estoppel may work an injustice. The arguments made by him and others (see also D. J. Lange, The Doctrine of Res Judicata in Canada (2000)), urging Canadian courts to abandon the mutuality requirement have been helpful in articulating a principled approach to the bar against relitigation. In my view, however, appropriate guidance is available in our law without the modification to the mutuality requirement that this case would necessitate.
26 In his very useful review of the abandonment of the mutuality requirement in the United States, Professor Watson, at p. 631, points out that mutuality was first relaxed when issue estoppel was used defensively:The defensive use of non-mutual issue estoppel is straight forward. If P, having litigated an issue with D1 and lost, subsequently sues D2 raising the same issue, D2 can rely defensively on the issue estoppel arising from the former action, unless the first action did not provide a full and fair opportunity to litigate or other factors make it unfair or unwise to permit preclusion. The rationale is that P should not be allowed to relitigate an issue already lost by simply changing defendants .... 27 Professor Watson then exposes the additional difficulties that arise if the mutuality requirement is removed when issue estoppel is raised offensively, as was done by the United States Supreme Court in Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322 (1979). He describes the offensive use of non mutual issue estoppel as follows (at p. 631):The power of this offensive non-mutual issue estoppel doctrine is illustrated by single event disaster cases, such as an airline crash. Assume P1 sues Airline for negligence in the operation of the aircraft and in that action Airline is found to have been negligent. Offensive non-mutual issue estoppel permits P2 through P20, etc., now to sue Airline and successfully plead issue estoppel on the question of the airline’s negligence. The rationale is that if Airline fully and fairly litigated the issue of its negligence in action #1 it has had its day in court; it has had due process and it should not be permitted to re-litigate the negligence issue. However, the court in Parklane realized that in order to ensure fairness in the operation of offensive non-mutual issue estoppel the doctrine has to be subject to qualifications. 28 Properly understood, our case could be viewed as falling under this second category — what would be described in U.S. law as “non-mutual offensive preclusion”. Although technically speaking the City of Toronto is not the “plaintiff” in the arbitration proceedings, the City wishes to take advantage of the conviction obtained by the Crown against Oliver in a different, prior proceeding to which the City was not a party. It wishes to preclude Oliver from relitigating an issue that he fought and lost in the criminal forum. U.S. law acknowledges the peculiar difficulties with offensive use of non-mutual estoppel. Professor Watson explains, at pp. 632-33:First, the court acknowledged that the effects of non-mutuality differ depending on whether issue estoppel is used offensively or defensively. While defensive preclusion helps to reduce litigation offensive preclusion, by contrast, encourages potential plaintiffs not to join in the first action. “Since a plaintiff will be able to rely on a previous judgment against a defendant but will not be bound by that judgment if the defendant wins, the plaintiff has every incentive to adopt a ‘wait and see’ attitude, in the hope that the first action by another plaintiff will result in a favorable judgment”. Thus, without some limit, non-mutual offensive preclusion would increase rather than decrease the total amount of litigation. To meet this problem the Parklane court held that preclusion should be denied in action #2 “where a plaintiff could easily have joined in the earlier action”.
Second, the court recognized that in some circumstances to permit non-mutual preclusion “would be unfair to the defendant” and the court referred to specific situations of unfairness: (a) the defendant may have had little incentive to defend vigorously the first action, that is, if she was sued for small or nominal damages, particularly if future suits were not foreseeable; (b) offensive preclusion may be unfair if the judgment relied upon as a basis for estoppel is itself inconsistent with one or more previous judgments in favour of the defendant; or (c) the second action affords to the defendant procedural opportunities unavailable in the first action that could readily result in a different outcome, that is, where the defendant in the first action was forced to defend in an inconvenient forum and was unable to call witnesses, or where in the first action much more limited discovery was available to the defendant than in the second action.
In the final analysis the court declared that the general rule should be that in cases where a plaintiff could easily have joined in the earlier action or where, either for the reasons discussed or for other reasons, the application of offensive estoppel would be unfair to the defendant, a trial judge should not allow the use of offensive collateral estoppel. 29 It is clear from the above that American non-mutual issue estoppel is not a mechanical, self-applying rule as evidenced by the discretionary elements which may militate against granting the estoppel. What emerges from the American experience with the abandonment of mutuality is a twofold concern: (1) the application of the estoppel must be sufficiently principled and predictable to promote efficiency; and (2) it must contain sufficient flexibility to prevent unfairness. In my view, this is what the doctrine of abuse of process offers, particularly, as here, where the issue involves a conviction in a criminal court for a serious crime. In a case such as this one, the true concerns are not primarily related to mutuality. The true concerns, well reflected in the reasons of the Court of Appeal, are with the integrity and the coherence of the administration of justice. This will often be the case when the estoppel originates from a finding made in a criminal case where many of the traditional concerns related to mutuality lose their significance.
30 For example, there is little relevance to the concern about the “wait and see” plaintiff, the “free rider” who will deliberately avoid the risk of joining the original litigation, but will later come forward to reap the benefits of the victory obtained by the party who should have been his co-plaintiff. No such concern can ever arise when the original action is in a criminal prosecution. Victims cannot, even if they wanted to, “join in” the prosecution so as to have their civil claim against the accused disposed of in a single trial. Nor can employers “join in” the criminal prosecution to have their employee dismissed for cause.
31 On the other hand, even though no one can join the prosecution, the prosecutor as a party represents the public interest. He or she represents a collective interest in the just and correct outcome of the case. The prosecutor is said to be a minister of justice who has nothing to win or lose from the outcome of the case but who must ensure that a just and true verdict is rendered. (See Law Society of Upper Canada, Rules of Professional Conduct (2000), Commentary Rule 4.01(3), at p. 61; R. v. Regan, [2002] 1 S.C.R. 297, 2002 SCC 12; Lemay v. The King, 1951 CanLII 27 (SCC), [1952] 1 S.C.R. 232, at pp. 256-57, per Cartwright J.; and R. v. Banks, [1916] 2 K.B. 621 (C.C.A.), at p. 623.) The mutuality requirement of the doctrine of issue estoppel, which insists that only the Crown and its privies be precluded from relitigating the guilt of the accused, is hardly reflective of the true role of the prosecutor.
32 As the present case illustrates, the primary concerns here are about the integrity of the criminal process and the increased authority of a criminal verdict, rather than some of the more traditional issue estoppel concerns that focus on the interests of the parties, such as costs and multiple “vexation”. For these reasons, I see no need to reverse or relax the long-standing application of the mutuality requirement in this case and I would conclude that issue estoppel has no application. I now turn to the question of whether the decision of the arbitrator amounted to a collateral attack on the verdict of the criminal court.
(2) Collateral Attack
33 The rule against collateral attack bars actions to overturn convictions when those actions take place in the wrong forum. As stated in Wilson v. The Queen, 1983 CanLII 35 (SCC), [1983] 2 S.C.R. 594, at p. 599, the rule against collateral attackhas long been a fundamental rule that a court order, made by a court having jurisdiction to make it, stands and is binding and conclusive unless it is set aside on appeal or lawfully quashed. It is also well settled in the authorities that such an order may not be attacked collaterally — and a collateral attack may be described as an attack made in proceedings other than those whose specific object is the reversal, variation, or nullification of the order or judgment. Thus, in Wilson, supra, the Court held that an inferior court judge was without jurisdiction to pass on the validity of a wiretap authorized by a superior court. Other cases that form the basis for this rule similarly involve attempts to overturn decisions in other fora, and not simply to relitigate their facts. In R. v. Sarson, 1996 CanLII 200 (SCC), [1996] 2 S.C.R. 223, at para. 35, this Court held that a prisoner’s habeas corpus attack on a conviction under a law later declared unconstitutional must fail under the rule against collateral attack because the prisoner was no longer “in the system” and because he was “in custody pursuant to the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction”. Similarly, in R. v. Consolidated Maybrun Mines Ltd., 1998 CanLII 820 (SCC), [1998] 1 S.C.R. 706, this Court held that a mine owner who had chosen to ignore an administrative appeals process for a pollution fine was barred from contesting the validity of that fine in court because the legislation directed appeals to an appellate administrative body, not to the courts. Binnie J. described the rule against collateral attack in Danyluk, supra, at para. 20, as follows: “that a judicial order pronounced by a court of competent jurisdiction should not be brought into question in subsequent proceedings except those provided by law for the express purpose of attacking it” (emphasis added).
34 Each of these cases concerns the appropriate forum for collateral attacks upon the judgment itself. However, in the case at bar, the union does not seek to overturn the sexual abuse conviction itself, but simply contest, for the purposes of a different claim with different legal consequences, whether the conviction was correct. It is an implicit attack on the correctness of the factual basis of the decision, not a contest about whether that decision has legal force, as clearly it does. Prohibited “collateral attacks” are abuses of the court’s process. However, in light of the focus of the collateral attack rule on attacking the order itself and its legal effect, I believe that the better approach here is to go directly to the doctrine of abuse of process.
(3) Abuse of Process
35 Judges have an inherent and residual discretion to prevent an abuse of the court’s process. This concept of abuse of process was described at common law as proceedings “unfair to the point that they are contrary to the interest of justice” (R. v. Power, 1994 CanLII 126 (SCC), [1994] 1 S.C.R. 601, at p. 616), and as “oppressive treatment” (R. v. Conway, 1989 CanLII 66 (SCC), [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1659, at p. 1667). McLachlin J. (as she then was) expressed it this way in R. v. Scott, 1990 CanLII 27 (SCC), [1990] 3 S.C.R. 979, at p. 1007:... abuse of process may be established where: (1) the proceedings are oppressive or vexatious; and, (2) violate the fundamental principles of justice underlying the community’s sense of fair play and decency. The concepts of oppressiveness and vexatiousness underline the interest of the accused in a fair trial. But the doctrine evokes as well the public interest in a fair and just trial process and the proper administration of justice. 36 The doctrine of abuse of process is used in a variety of legal contexts. The unfair or oppressive treatment of an accused may disentitle the Crown to carry on with the prosecution of a charge: Conway, supra, at p. 1667. In Blencoe v. British Columbia (Human Rights Commission), [2000] 2 S.C.R. 307, 2000 SCC 44, this Court held that unreasonable delay causing serious prejudice could amount to an abuse of process. When the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies, the common law doctrine of abuse of process is subsumed into the principles of the Charter such that there is often overlap between abuse of process and constitutional remedies (R. v. O’Connor, 1995 CanLII 51 (SCC), [1995] 4 S.C.R. 411). The doctrine nonetheless continues to have application as a non-Charter remedy: United States of America v. Shulman, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 616, 2001 SCC 21, at para. 33.
37 In the context that interests us here, the doctrine of abuse of process engages “the inherent power of the court to prevent the misuse of its procedure, in a way that would . . . bring the administration of justice into disrepute” (Canam Enterprises Inc. v. Coles (2000), 2000 CanLII 8514 (ON CA), 51 O.R. (3d) 481 (C.A.), at para. 55, per Goudge J.A., dissenting (approved [2002] 3 S.C.R. 307, 2002 SCC 63)). Goudge J.A. expanded on that concept in the following terms at paras. 55-56:The doctrine of abuse of process engages the inherent power of the court to prevent the misuse of its procedure, in a way that would be manifestly unfair to a party to the litigation before it or would in some other way bring the administration of justice into disrepute. It is a flexible doctrine unencumbered by the specific requirements of concepts such as issue estoppel. See House of Spring Gardens Ltd. v. Waite, [1990] 3 W.L.R. 347 at p. 358, [1990] 2 All E.R. 990 (C.A.).
One circumstance in which abuse of process has been applied is where the litigation before the court is found to be in essence an attempt to relitigate a claim which the court has already determined. [Emphasis added.] As Goudge J.A.’s comments indicate, Canadian courts have applied the doctrine of abuse of process to preclude relitigation in circumstances where the strict requirements of issue estoppel (typically the privity/mutuality requirements) are not met, but where allowing the litigation to proceed would nonetheless violate such principles as judicial economy, consistency, finality and the integrity of the administration of justice. (See, for example, Franco v. White (2001), 2001 CanLII 24020 (ON CA), 53 O.R. (3d) 391 (C.A.); Bomac Construction Ltd. v. Stevenson, 1986 CanLII 3573 (SK CA), [1986] 5 W.W.R. 21 (Sask. C.A.); and Bjarnarson v. Government of Manitoba (1987), 1987 CanLII 993 (MB KB), 38 D.L.R. (4th) 32 (Man. Q.B.), aff’d (1987), 1987 CanLII 5396 (MB CA), 21 C.P.C. (2d) 302 (Man. C.A.).) This has resulted in some criticism, on the ground that the doctrine of abuse of process by relitigation is in effect non-mutual issue estoppel by another name without the important qualifications recognized by the American courts as part and parcel of the general doctrine of non-mutual issue estoppel (Watson, supra, at pp. 624-25).
38 It is true that the doctrine of abuse of process has been extended beyond the strict parameters of res judicata while borrowing much of its rationales and some of its constraints. It is said to be more of an adjunct doctrine, defined in reaction to the settled rules of issue estoppel and cause of action estoppel, than an independent one (Lange, supra, at p. 344). The policy grounds supporting abuse of process by relitigation are the same as the essential policy grounds supporting issue estoppel (Lange, supra, at pp. 347-48):The two policy grounds, namely, that there be an end to litigation and that no one should be twice vexed by the same cause, have been cited as policies in the application of abuse of process by relitigation. Other policy grounds have also been cited, namely, to preserve the courts’ and the litigants’ resources, to uphold the integrity of the legal system in order to avoid inconsistent results, and to protect the principle of finality so crucial to the proper administration of justice. 39 The locus classicus for the modern doctrine of abuse of process and its relationship to res judicata is Hunter, supra, aff’g McIlkenny v. Chief Constable of the West Midlands, [1980] Q.B. 283 (C.A.). The case involved an action for damages for personal injuries brought by the six men convicted of bombing two pubs in Birmingham. They claimed that they had been beaten by the police during their interrogation. The plaintiffs had raised the same issue at their criminal trial, where it was found by both the judge and jury that the confessions were voluntary and that the police had not used violence. At the Court of Appeal, Lord Denning, M.R., endorsed non‑mutual issue estoppel and held that the question of whether any beatings had taken place was estopped by the earlier determination, although it was raised here against a different opponent. He noted that in analogous cases, courts had sometimes refused to allow a party to raise an issue for a second time because it was an “abuse of the process of the court”, but held that the proper characterization of the matter was through non‑mutual issue estoppel.
40 On appeal to the House of Lords, Lord Denning’s attempt to reform the law of issue estoppel was overruled, but the higher court reached the same result via the doctrine of abuse of process. Lord Diplock stated, at p. 541:The abuse of process which the instant case exemplifies is the initiation of proceedings in a court of justice for the purpose of mounting a collateral attack upon a final decision against the intending plaintiff which has been made by another court of competent jurisdiction in previous proceedings in which the intending plaintiff had a full opportunity of contesting the decision in the court by which it was made. 41 It is important to note that a public inquiry after the civil action of the six accused in Hunter, supra, resulted in the finding that the confessions of the Birmingham six had been extracted through police brutality (see R. v. McIlkenny (1991), 93 Cr. App. R. 287 (C.A.), at pp. 304 et seq.). In my view, this does not support a relaxation of the existing procedural mechanisms designed to ensure finality in criminal proceedings. The danger of wrongful convictions has been acknowledged by this Court and other courts (see United States v. Burns, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 283, 2001 SCC 7, at para. 1; and R. v. Bromley (2001), 2001 NFCA 5 (CanLII), 151 C.C.C. (3d) 480 (Nfld. C.A.), at pp. 517‑18). Although safeguards must be put in place for the protection of the innocent, and, more generally, to ensure the trustworthiness of court findings, continuous re‑litigation is not a guarantee of factual accuracy.
42 The attraction of the doctrine of abuse of process is that it is unencumbered by the specific requirements of res judicata while offering the discretion to prevent relitigation, essentially for the purpose of preserving the integrity of the court’s process. (See Doherty J.A.’s reasons, at para. 65; see also Demeter (H.C.), supra, at p. 264, and Hunter, supra, at p. 536.)
43 Critics of that approach have argued that when abuse of process is used as a proxy for issue estoppel, it obscures the true question while adding nothing but a vague sense of discretion. I disagree. At least in the context before us, namely, an attempt to relitigate a criminal conviction, I believe that abuse of process is a doctrine much more responsive to the real concerns at play. In all of its applications, the primary focus of the doctrine of abuse of process is the integrity of the adjudicative functions of courts. Whether it serves to disentitle the Crown from proceeding because of undue delays (see Blencoe, supra), or whether it prevents a civil party from using the courts for an improper purpose (see Hunter, supra, and Demeter, supra), the focus is less on the interest of parties and more on the integrity of judicial decision making as a branch of the administration of justice. In a case such as the present one, it is that concern that compels a bar against relitigation, more than any sense of unfairness to a party being called twice to put its case forward, for example. When that is understood, the parameters of the doctrine become easier to define, and the exercise of discretion is better anchored in principle.
44 The adjudicative process, and the importance of preserving its integrity, were well described by Doherty J.A. He said, at para. 74:The adjudicative process in its various manifestations strives to do justice. By the adjudicative process, I mean the various courts and tribunals to which individuals must resort to settle legal disputes. Where the same issues arise in various forums, the quality of justice delivered by the adjudicative process is measured not by reference to the isolated result in each forum, but by the end result produced by the various processes that address the issue. By justice, I refer to procedural fairness, the achieving of the correct result in individual cases and the broader perception that the process as a whole achieves results which are consistent, fair and accurate. 45 When asked to decide whether a criminal conviction, prima facie admissible in a proceeding under s. 22.1 of the Ontario Evidence Act, ought to be rebutted or taken as conclusive, courts will turn to the doctrine of abuse of process to ascertain whether relitigation would be detrimental to the adjudicative process as defined above. When the focus is thus properly on the integrity of the adjudicative process, the motive of the party who seeks to relitigate, or whether he or she wishes to do so as a defendant rather than as a plaintiff, cannot be decisive factors in the application of the bar against relitigation.
46 Thus, in the case at bar, it matters little whether Oliver’s motive for relitigation was primarily to secure re‑employment, rather than to challenge his criminal conviction in an attempt to undermine its validity. Reliance on Hunter, supra, and on Demeter (H.C.), supra, for the purpose of enhancing the importance of motive is misplaced. It is true that in both cases the parties wishing to relitigate had made it clear that they were seeking to impeach their earlier convictions. But this is of little significance in the application of the doctrine of abuse of process. A desire to attack a judicial finding is not in itself an improper purpose. The law permits that objective to be pursued through various reviewing mechanisms such as appeals or judicial review. Indeed reviewability is an important aspect of finality. A decision is final and binding on the parties only when all available reviews have been exhausted or abandoned. What is improper is to attempt to impeach a judicial finding by the impermissible route of relitigation in a different forum. Therefore, motive is of little or no import.
47 There is also no reason to constrain the doctrine of abuse of process only to those cases where the plaintiff has initiated the relitigation. The designation of the parties to the second litigation may mask the reality of the situation. In the present case, for instance, aside from the technical mechanism of the grievance procedures, who should be viewed as the initiator of the employment litigation between the grievor, Oliver, and his union on the one hand, and the City of Toronto on the other? Technically, the union is the “plaintiff” in the arbitration procedure. But the City of Toronto used Oliver’s criminal conviction as a basis for his dismissal. I cannot see what difference it makes, again from the point of view of the integrity of the adjudicative process, whether Oliver is labelled a plaintiff or a defendant when it comes to relitigating his criminal conviction.
48 The appellant relies on Re Del Core, supra, to suggest that the abuse of process doctrine only applies to plaintiffs. Re Del Core, however, provided no majority opinion as to whether and when public policy would preclude relitigation of issues determined in a criminal proceeding. For one, Blair J.A. did not limit the circumstances in which relitigation would amount to an abuse of process to those cases in which a person convicted sought to relitigate the validity of his conviction in subsequent proceedings which he himself had instituted (at p. 22):The right to challenge a conviction is subject to an important qualification. A convicted person cannot attempt to prove that the conviction was wrong in circumstances where it would constitute an abuse of process to do so. . . . Courts have rejected attempts to relitigate the very issues dealt with at a criminal trial where the civil proceedings were perceived to be a collateral attack on the criminal conviction. The ambit of this qualification remains to be determined . . . . [Emphasis added.] 49 While the authorities most often cited in support of a court’s power to prevent relitigation of decided issues in circumstances where issue estoppel does not apply are cases where a convicted person commenced a civil proceeding for the purpose of attacking a finding made in a criminal proceeding against that person (namely Demeter (H.C.), supra, and Hunter, supra; see also Q. v. Minto Management Ltd. (1984), 1984 CanLII 2118 (ON SC), 46 O.R. (2d) 756 (H.C.), Franco, supra, at paras. 29-31), there is no reason in principle why these rules should be limited to such specific circumstances. Several cases have applied the doctrine of abuse of process to preclude defendants from relitigating issues decided against them in a prior proceeding. See for example Nigro v. Agnew‑Surpass Shoe Stores Ltd. (1977), 1977 CanLII 3406 (ON SC), 18 O.R. (2d) 215 (H.C.), at p. 218, aff’d without reference to this point (1978), 1976 CanLII 692 (ON CA), 18 O.R. (2d) 714 (C.A.); Bomac, supra, at pp. 26‑27; Bjarnarson, supra, at p. 39; Germscheid v. Valois (1989), 1989 CanLII 4156 (ON SC), 68 O.R. (2d) 670 (H.C.); Simpson v. Geswein (1995), 1995 CanLII 16110 (MB KB), 25 C.C.L.T. (2d) 49 (Man. Q.B.), at p. 61; Roenisch v. Roenisch (1991), 1991 CanLII 6223 (AB KB), 85 D.L.R. (4th) 540 (Alta. Q.B.), at p. 546; Saskatoon Credit Union, Ltd. v. Central Park Enterprises Ltd. (1988), 1988 CanLII 2941 (BC SC), 47 D.L.R. (4th) 431 (B.C.S.C.), at p. 438; Canadian Tire Corp. v. Summers (1995), 1995 CanLII 7183 (ON SC), 23 O.R. (3d) 106 (Gen. Div.), at p. 115; see also P. M. Perell, “Res Judicata and Abuse of Process” (2001), 24 Advocates’ Q. 189, at pp. 196‑97; and Watson, supra, at pp. 648‑51.
50 It has been argued that it is difficult to see how mounting a defence can be an abuse of process (see M. Teplitsky, “Prior Criminal Convictions: Are They Conclusive Proof? An Arbitrator’s Perspective”, in K. Whitaker et al., eds., Labour Arbitration Yearbook 2001-2002 (2002), vol. I, 279). A common justification for the doctrine of res judicata is that a party should not be twice vexed in the same cause, that is, the party should not be burdened with having to relitigate the same issue (Watson, supra, at p. 633). Of course, a defendant may be quite pleased to have another opportunity to litigate an issue originally decided against him. A proper focus on the process, rather than on the interests of a party, will reveal why relitigation should not be permitted in such a case.
51 Rather than focus on the motive or status of the parties, the doctrine of abuse of process concentrates on the integrity of the adjudicative process. Three preliminary observations are useful in that respect. First, there can be no assumption that relitigation will yield a more accurate result than the original proceeding. Second, if the same result is reached in the subsequent proceeding, the relitigation will prove to have been a waste of judicial resources as well as an unnecessary expense for the parties and possibly an additional hardship for some witnesses. Finally, if the result in the subsequent proceeding is different from the conclusion reached in the first on the very same issue, the inconsistency, in and of itself, will undermine the credibility of the entire judicial process, thereby diminishing its authority, its credibility and its aim of finality.
52 In contrast, proper review by way of appeal increases confidence in the ultimate result and affirms both the authority of the process as well as the finality of the result. It is therefore apparent that from the system’s point of view, relitigation carries serious detrimental effects and should be avoided unless the circumstances dictate that relitigation is in fact necessary to enhance the credibility and the effectiveness of the adjudicative process as a whole. There may be instances where relitigation will enhance, rather than impeach, the integrity of the judicial system, for example: (1) when the first proceeding is tainted by fraud or dishonesty; (2) when fresh, new evidence, previously unavailable, conclusively impeaches the original results; or (3) when fairness dictates that the original result should not be binding in the new context. This was stated unequivocally by this Court in Danyluk, supra, at para. 80.
53 The discretionary factors that apply to prevent the doctrine of issue estoppel from operating in an unjust or unfair way are equally available to prevent the doctrine of abuse of process from achieving a similar undesirable result. There are many circumstances in which the bar against relitigation, either through the doctrine of res judicata or that of abuse of process, would create unfairness. If, for instance, the stakes in the original proceeding were too minor to generate a full and robust response, while the subsequent stakes were considerable, fairness would dictate that the administration of justice would be better served by permitting the second proceeding to go forward than by insisting that finality should prevail. An inadequate incentive to defend, the discovery of new evidence in appropriate circumstances, or a tainted original process may all overcome the interest in maintaining the finality of the original decision (Danyluk, supra, at para. 51; Franco, supra, at para. 55).
54 These considerations are particularly apposite when the attempt is to relitigate a criminal conviction. Casting doubt over the validity of a criminal conviction is a very serious matter. Inevitably in a case such as this one, the conclusion of the arbitrator has precisely that effect, whether this was intended or not. The administration of justice must equip itself with all legitimate means to prevent wrongful convictions and to address any real possibility of such an occurrence after the fact. Collateral attacks and relitigation, however, are not in my view appropriate methods of redress since they inordinately tax the adjudicative process while doing nothing to ensure a more trustworthy result.
55 In light of the above, it is apparent that the common law doctrines of issue estoppel, collateral attack and abuse of process adequately capture the concerns that arise when finality in litigation must be balanced against fairness to a particular litigant. There is therefore no need to endorse, as the Court of Appeal did, a self-standing and independent “finality principle” either as a separate doctrine or as an independent test to preclude relitigation.
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