The proposal for amendments of the rules goes from a consideration of the general nature of the Court system right through to a detailed discussion of all the various steps along the way right from the Writ and Statement of Claim through to Judgment. Most proposals for reform are contained in the actual steps on the way to a completion of a lawsuit, and by their nature are non-contentious. Rather they are simply oiled to make the machine work more efficiently. There are several areas which the Association ought to give some consideration to on the grounds that there may potentially be an infringement of civil liberties. They are as follows:

1. Discovery
   The proposal here is basically that not only the parties to an action may be discovered but that any witness who may be potentially called at the trial could also be discovered. The proposal went so far as to suggest that the external auditor of a corporation, even though he has no other relationship to the corporation, ought to be discoverable. This proposal seems to go a very long way and would allow lawyers to go on very extended fishing trips to try and discover what witnesses would potentially say at the trial. Since this would be mandatory to give your evidence this seems to unduly infringe upon a person’s right to remain silent about any particular litigation which is in progress. On the other hand, the rational for the proposed change is that it would get the evidence out and give Counsel a more reasonable chance to adequately access the case before a trial is taken and thereby avoid unnecessary litigation.
2. Medical examinations
   As the situation is now, a Defendant is entitled to have the Plaintiff examined medically one time, if the Plaintiff is claiming damages for some alleged personal injury. The proposed amendment reads as follows:

   The Court may order any party to be, not only physically but mentally, examined. The examining doctor In making the examination, may ask any questions regarding-the patient’s medical condition and history, examine hospital records, and conduct x-ray and other tests. The medical report is exchanged between parties. The examining doctor is subject to examination on the trial unless the parties otherwise agree.

   This rule if amended in this manner opens up the whole issue of doctor-patient privilege. It also raises the problem of having people examined by a psychiatrist. This, of course, raises a difficult problem in that given any ten psychiatrists you will probably get ten different opinions. However, the rule as amended, we think, would only apply in situations where the person would be claiming damages for say brain damage or psychological disorder arising out of an accident. On the other hand, opening up the man’s own doctors files for a thorough examination by the other side will make doctors more reluctant to do thorough examinations and to commit them to writing because of their potential exposure.

3. Evidence on Trial
   The proposal there is that, contrary to the current practice which is that all evidence must be given by a person in the witness stand. that statutory Declarations and Affidavits be available as evidence. This of course, cuts out cross-examinations and could leave it wide open for a party to select which part of the person’s testimony he wanted to put in and exclude the part which would be harmful to him. However, there is a provision for notice to the other side and that person could then demand that the person be brought to trial and made available for cross-examination.
4. Judgment
   The problem in the past with judgments has been that people could avoid having them executed by devices such as putting everything in their wife’s name, putting things in the name of private companies and hiding the assets, or moving from the area where the judgment holder lives and thereby making it very inconvenient and expensive for him to execute. The suggestion is that the state be given power to suspend a person’s driver’s licence and a corporation’s charter or certificate of good standing until they have satisfied the judgment. This, of course, would put many people in a position where they might lose their livelihood and appears much too harsh to achieve the desired result.A better approach, we suggest, would be to tighten up the rules on execution and to have the state do some of the services for people free of charge to get around the problems which we have stated earlier. The proposed amendments freely do not raise any major civil liberties problems but there does seem to be a trend towards making the individual much more susceptible to fully disclosing his personal position and this in itself may be a bad trend.