Judges have an inherent discretion to control the process of the courts to prevent an abuse of process. There are many forms of abuse of the court’s process. Some examples are: inappropriate behaviour in court by one of the parties, no legal status to sue, a frivolous lawsuit primarily meant to annoy someone, and a person starting too many lawsuits in the court system at one time. A common form of abuse of process is the doctrine of abuse of process by relitigation. A litigant is not permitted to be involved in the same issue of litigation more than once.
The Supreme Court of Canada has recently given clear definition to the doctrine of abuse of process by relitigation in the case of Toronto (City) v. CUPE. In Toronto, an employer, at a grievance arbitration, relied upon an employee’s conviction of sexual assault from a previous criminal proceeding in order to establish that the employee had engaged in conduct which justified a dismissal from employment. The arbitrator ruled that, while the employee’s criminal conviction was admissible as evidence, the union, on the employee’s behalf, could relitigate the conviction in the grievance arbitration. The Supreme Court of Canada firmly disagreed and applied the abuse of process doctrine to “estop” the relitigation of the conviction. The court stated that there were two important factors to be considered in applying this discretionary doctrine. The interests of the individuals in revisiting the issue are not the decisive factor but rather the integrity of the judicial decision-making process. In addition, the finality of a criminal decision is of utmost importance where complainants testifying on behalf of the Crown, and other witnesses testifying in the criminal proceeding, may be exposed to the stressful task of re-testifying against the accused who is now a party in a civil proceeding.