The Appellants, pursuant to Rule 14.5, sought to Appeal a decision of Justice Wakeling which denied their previous Application to extend their deadline to Appeal and restore their struck Appeal.

Justice Wakeling noted that permission to Appeal a decision of a single judge of the Court of Appeal to a panel of the Court of Appeal would rarely be granted. The reasons for this, Justice Wakeling observed, included that Part 14 of the Alberta Rules of Court, assigns a single judge of the Court of Appeal as a gate-keeper. Rule 14.37(1) stipules that a single judge may hear or decide any Application incidental to the Appeal. Further, it does not make sense to compel the parties and the Court of Appeal to assign more resources than necessary to resolve matters that are originally assigned to a single appellate judge in accordance with Rule 1.2. Rules 14.5(2) and 14.5(3) require a party who wishes to appeal a decision of a single judge to secure the permission of the judge whose decision the party wishes to appeal and denies any right to Appeal of that decision confirms the existence of the policy decision - no more judges than are necessary should review a matter for which the original jurisdiction was assigned to a single judge.

The Court proceeded to state that such consideration may be made where there is a compelling reason such that it would be an issue of general importance to the community or of sufficient importance to the parties. It would be considered of general importance to the community where it is a legal question, the answer to which would provide precedential value to the area of law engaged. In addition, the adjudicator may grant an Appeal if the earlier decision is the product of a misunderstanding of the law or misapprehension of the evidence, or both. The adjudicator must also be satisfied that the proposed Appeal has a chance of success.

Justice Wakling found that the Applicant’s Appeal raised no question of general importance and that there was no arguable issue of bias or procedural fairness and dismissed their application to Appeal.