Does a judge have a duty to make sure that the hours spent by a lawyer at trial are justified?
Ontario, Canada
The following excerpt is from Murphy v. Murphy, 2010 ONSC 6204 (CanLII):
In the same vein, Justice Killeen in Pagnotta v. Brown, [2002] O.J. No. 3033 at paras. 24-25 (S.C.), stated: …if lawyers wish to expend such grossly inordinate amounts of billable hours on relatively routine cases, they may feel free to do so, subject to their client’s approval, but they cannot expect judges to encourage such inefficient expenditures of time when their costs are to be fixed following upon a trial. …judges…have a duty to fix or assess costs at reasonable amounts and, in this process, they have a duty to make sure that the hours spent can be reasonably justified.
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