Please be advised that this morning the Ontario Superior Court issues a new Notice to the Profession and the Public announcing a further extension of the current suspension of in-person court dates. All in-person court dates are now being adjourned (rescheduled) into July, and we are expecting to receive the list of specific dates for London, Ontario family court matters soon. Similar to what this office did in March, you will receive another individual e-mail from me in the coming days with your revised court date as we will need to go through each file individually to determine the next court date.

It does look like the Superior Court is also now considering expanding the services it will offer electronically and by teleconference, and we hope to hear another announcement about that soon. If it becomes possible to move some of your cases along by teleconference, I will contact you about this possibility. In the meantime, for those of you who had trials on the spring and June lists, I am continuing to prepare for your trials so that we are ready when the time comes, but we do not know when those trials will be proceeding at this point. For those of you who had motions that you wanted to bring, I am paying close attention to the changing situation with the court, and we will continue to re-evaluate the possibility of bringing your motions by teleconference or other means wherever possible. Many of you had settlement conferences or trial management conferences adjourned over the past two months, and we are continuing to wait for an announcement about those possibly being able to proceed by telephone.

While the court is partially closed down, it is still possible to continue to work towards settlement by preparing offers to settle or setting up meetings by video conference. I am continuing to work on those matters for clients who have already been working with me on resolution/settlement discussions and negotiations. If you are a client who is newly interested in considering the possibility of putting an offer to settle together, or trying a four-way meeting by video, I would be happy to discuss that process with you as well.

Once again, thank you for your business and your patience with our court system at this time. You should hear from me directly with your new court date by next week at the latest.

Eric Vallilllee
London, Ontario Family Lawyer