PT v ZWN

This is a costs decision arising from an underlying eight-day Trial, with reasons at PT v ZWN, 2025 ABKB 716. The Trial concerned a guardianship and access dispute between a child’s biological father and aunt. The Court granted the father’s Application to terminate the aunt’s guardianship, reduce her access, and reclassify her access as ‘contact time’. The father sought costs of $81,610.00, pursuant to Column 1 of Schedule C of the Rules, with doubling after delivery of a settlement offer or, alternatively $80,000.00, being 50% of his legal fees.

Pursuant to Rule 10.31, Justice Sidnell considered the factors set out in Rule 10.33, together with the Trial reasons, and noted, among other things:

1. In terms of degree of success, the Court found that the father was partially successful and the aunt was unsuccessful. The father’s success was limited as he failed to demonstrate that it was in the best interest of the child to terminate the aunt’s access time completely.
2. While the Trial and its outcome were exceedingly important to the parties, it did not rise to the level of public importance.
3. The Court addressed the fact that the parties brought various Interlocutory Applications during the Trial, many of which the father successfully advanced. However, Justice Sidnell held that the costs for those Applications were determined by the Justice or Applications Judge most familiar with them, and that she could not assess those costs.
4. Enhanced costs were not warranted based on the parties’ conduct, despite the alleged inefficiencies and the father’s assertion that the aunt caused many unnecessary steps in the litigation. The record was insufficient to support a Costs Award on this basis.
5. The Court considered the father’s submission that his settlement offer should carry cost consequences. The offer was an unconventional handwritten settlement offer made during an impromptu courthouse meeting and did not comply with Rule 4.29, and any cost consequences were discretionary, not mandatory. In any event, the father did not obtain a more favourable result than the offer.

Based on these factors, Justice Sidnell awarded the father a lump sum Costs Award of $15,000 along with disbursements of $1,985.34.