For the first time in more than a decade, the BC Court of Appeal is travelling to B.C.'s northern capital to hear a case. Three judges are flying in to Prince George for a scheduled hearing between the City of Prince George and Rob Gibson, former owner of the Columbus Hotel.
The offer was on the table to pay for Gibson's travel expenses, who is representing himself.
"I told them I was not going to pay my own way down for this hearing," said Gibson. "I won the first court case, it was the City of Prince George that appealed it, so I don't see why I should have to pay for anything. I can't afford that kind of travel for something that wasn't my doing."
The appeal gives the city another chance to recover the $175,000 it spent demolishing and cleaning up the ruins of the Columbus Hotel in 2008 after a fire destroyed it.
In Feb. 2, 2010 the B.C. Supreme Court denied the city's request for a summary judgment requiring Gibson to pay for the clean up, which municipal staff undertook when Gibson went over the city's deadline of a week to do the work.
Court of Appeal law officer Timothy Outerbridge said there was a protocol in place to bring their activities to the other major centres of B.C., "since this is a court for the province not just for Vancouver," he said.
The appeals court is seated in Vancouver and already sometimes sits in Victoria, but it was decided that restoring service to Kamloops and Kelowna (it had gone defunct in the past few years) as well as reestablishing service in Prince George should be a priority.
"It has happened before in Prince George, but it has been years," Outerbridge said. "The last time a Court of Appeal hearing happened there was Sept. 14, 2010 for a special sitting celebrating the Court of Appeal's centenary, but no case was heard at that time. The last time an actual case was heard in Prince George was in the 1990s.
"There is now a practice directive that discusses the importance of the court sitting outside of Vancouver and Victoria. There is a desire for cases of local importance to the public to be heard within those communities. Prince George has been targeted as one of the three communities where the court will sit for that purpose."
Gibson appreciates the gesture by the Court of Appeal to factor in his financial constraints, but wonders why the less costly option of moving one person versus three wasn't pursued. He said he would have been comfortable with using a video link like other courts around the province do on a routine basis.
"We do use videolink mostly for chambers matters, which are short procedural matters," said BC Court of Appeal registrar Jennifer Jordan.
"The court also does a lot of applications by telephone. For civil cases there is a charge from the government for [videolink], a fee of about $265 per hour for two courtrooms, plus you have to have double the staff - staff at either end. For regular hearings, there is a preference for a face-to-face meeting."
Justices Mary Saunders, Richard Low and Christopher Hinkson will comprise the panel at the hearing of City of Prince George vs. Columbus Hotel Company. The hearings will be held at the Prince George Courthouse.
