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S.R. was arrested for Impaired Driving in December of 2022 out of Newmarket courthouse. In September of 2023, S.R. retained Mariya Protsenko of Neuberger &Partners LLP as his counsel. Mariya sent several e-mails to Newmarket courthouse and received a response that court information was marked as error and, therefore, there were no charges before the court. In October of 2023, S.R. was served with summons to attend court on the charge of Over 80. Mariya received disclosure and analyzed it. Further on, she moved very quickly with a pre-trial and trial scheduling. A 2-day trial was scheduled to commence in October of 2024. In April 2024, Mariya brought an application to stay the charge under s.11(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for unreasonable delay. The base of the application was that the commencement of a trial was more than 18 months from the day of the arrest which was a s.11(b) violation as per R. v. Jordan case ruling by Supreme Court of Canada. During an application hearing, the judge requested additional court transcripts and suggested to counsel that the most recent case law prohibits her from taking arrest date as the Jordan s. 11b start of the countdown date. Mariya has done some legal research and amended an application. She argued that even though the delay was under 18 months, it was still unreasonable in the particular circumstances of the case. There was a full day hearing in July of 2024. After some deliberations, the judge agreed with Mariya’s application that the delay was unreasonable. In her reasons, the judge advised that Mariya correctly noted the issues with the way police proceeded – they laid information very late, they laid information incorrectly at first and took a lot of unnecessary time. The judge further emphasized that Mariya moved the matter very fast – she had a trial scheduled in under 3 months from the first court date to a trial scheduling date. Lastly, the judge relied on the case law provided by Mariya. The judge stayed the charge and vacated the trial dates.
