Time Limit for Litigation

R v. Jordan is the recent case law where the Supreme Court has changed or at least added a different nuance to the analysis of whether your right to a trial within a reasonable amount of time under Section 11(b) of the Charter has been violated.

What the Supreme Court did, which they hadn’t done prior, was to create hard ceilings on the amount of time that a matter could take from essentially the start to finish.

Jordan initially enunciated an 18-month hard ceiling on what’s called summary matters and a 30-month hard ceiling on what’s called indictable matters, indictable matters cover more serious things and summary, less serious things, often enough.

Effectively what it means is that once the litigation has gone beyond 18 months, as far as the Supreme Court is concerned in Jordan, your trial, your right to a trial within a reasonable amount of time has been violated and the matter should be stayed, subject to submissions, perhaps circumstances.