The Lawyers Weekly - August 6, 2010

OSCAR
Continued From Page 1

time-consuming traditional book-
ing practices and received strong
support from key stakeholders,
including lawyers, law firms, pro-
fessional organizations, media
and the judiciary. Estates List
court staff and Court Services Div-
ision management were also sup-
portive of the system.”
The statement said that in
December 2008 the ministry told
Court Canada it had been selected
as the successful respondent to a
request for proposals (RFP)
issued earlier that year for a Web-
based scheduling system that
would ultimately cover all civil
divisions of the Superior Court in
the province. Although by the
spring of 2009, OSCAR was
operational in the court’s Com-
mercial List, the plaintiff said the
Toronto Estates and Commercial
lists together represented less
than 15 per cent of the Superior
Court civil caseload volume in
Toronto and 5 per cent of the
court’s province-wide volume.

“[OSCAR] represented a marked improvement
over the inefficient and time-consuming traditional
booking practices and received strong support
from key stakeholders…
sion not to proceed with the
OSCAR deployment…”
However, in a statement of
defence filed July 27, the min-
istry attributed its decision not
to proceed with the OSCAR
deployment to added costs
being encountered with the
Commercial List scheduling
Court Canada specified that the
supply of services was on a non-
exclusive basis and the ministry
was making no representations
concerning the volume of goods
and services it required and
reserved the right “to obtain the
same services internally.”
The statement of defence said
the FRANK system’s deployment
began in 2002 in courts outside
Toronto and in Toronto courts in
mid-2008. That system, which
was not in use in the Estates
Court offices, involves litigants
having to call, e-mail or fax a
request to the court office or
attend in person. “At all material
times, FRANK remained the
main system of case management
in the Superior Courts of Ontario.”
Noting that OSCAR was com-
pletely voluntary, the statement
said members of the Commercial
Bar have shown little interest in
using it. “In the period from July
2009 to June 2010, only 52 mat-
ters, or 0.73% of all matters
booked in Commercial Court
were reserved by lawyers using
OSCAR. The balance was booked
through court staff on FRANK.”
The statement said that
despite the lack of interest, court
staff “continued to complete the
‘double entries’ of matters booked
through FRANK into OSCAR,
thereby increasing staff time

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