31420-12-1 SAWRIDGE, Indian vs. ROLAND, Twinn et al

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1 resources, have no significant financial resources. And again, I don’t know that the Court
2 can take judicial notice of that fact. It’s potentially true, but we don’t know that. And so
3 I think that again it was incumbent on the Public Trustee to seek that evidence on this
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issue and put it before the Court if, in fact, it was an issue.
6 And then finally in paragraph 57, they say that if there’s no litigation representative, the
7 issues identified by the Office of the Public Trustee will not be addressed. And as you
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know, I have said over and over that that, in fact, is not the case.
10 The final thing that it says is that indeed only active parties to this proceeding vigorously
11 oppose consideration -- sorry, indeed the only active parties to this proceeding vigorously
12 oppose consideration of the issues raised by the Public Trustee. And I’m not sure exactly
13 where that came from because we certainly don’t oppose those issues. We will, in fact,
14 address all of those issues with the exception of membership which, you know from our
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brief, we believe is irrelevant and that we are not the proper parties to deal with that.
17 When we were researching the issue of advance costs, I have to say I fully expected to
18 find some case where the Public Trustee didn’t have to deal with the tripartite test in
19 Okanagan and they got their costs. But in fact, there are no such cases. And the Public
20 Trustee hasn’t brought them forward, we certainly haven’t found any, and so I don’t -- I
21 know that my friend in her submissions said this is an unusual case and it can be
22 distinguished, but she didn’t, at least I didn’t hear her, pursue that in terms of saying why
23 it was distinguishable. If she would, I would like to address it. But I don’t think that
24 there is any law before you that would allow in this particular case an advance award of
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costs.
27 In paragraph 48 of the main brief of the Public Trustee, again, this is the issue of that
28 normally the party adverse to the individual in need of a litigation representative must
29 apply for direction, but we don’t see ourselves, the Public Trustees don’t see themselves
30 as adverse in interest to the beneficiaries. This is an issue of direction with respect to a
31 definition. And so there are many people who are going to be affected. We are not
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adverse in interest. This isn’t confrontational litigation.
34 Again, in paragraphs 54 and 55 of the new brief, they deal with the whole issue of an
35 alleged bias on behalf of everyone and suggests that no one who’s a beneficiary can be
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objective even if they are a parent.
38 THE COURT:
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So you’re back in the original brief?
40 MS. BONORA:
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Yes. I’m sorry.