What is the test for determining whether a jury trial of three weeks is of more than ordinary difficulty?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Howell v. Witt, 2016 BCSC 913 (CanLII):
The plaintiff’s suggestion that jury trials of three weeks should be considered to be of more than ordinary difficulty finds no support in the jurisprudence. None of the cases cited by the parties considered the mode of trial to be a factor in fixing the scale of costs. I note that this issue was considered in Topple v. Topple, [1991] B.C.J. No. 2990 (S.C.). The plaintiff sought costs at Scale 5 (under the former Rules) following a 16-day trial on the grounds that a jury trial was, by its very nature, more complex than a trial by judge alone. Madam Justice Rowles rejected that argument and stated: The fact that a trial proceeds with a jury does not, in itself, alter the difficulty of the matters to be decided. In my view costs on a scale higher than 3 cannot be justified solely on the basis that there has been a jury trial. (at p. 3)
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