Judgments and Reasons for Judgments

A judgment (also called an "order" or a "ruling") is the official decision of the Court made at the conclusion of an appeal, e.g. the "appeal is allowed" or the “appeal is dismissed”.

Reasons for judgment (also called “reasons”), explain the basis for the judgment, e.g. why the appeal was allowed and what errors the trial judge or tribunal made.

The Court of Appeal may pronounce judgments and reasons for judgment orally or in writing.

• Oral reasons are given immediately after the appeal hearing or may be “reserved” and pronounced later. Oral reasons are usually given by a single judge sitting in “chambers” (a courtroom set aside for a single judge to hear applications on minor issues related to the appeal). Only oral chambers reasons that have precedential value (meaning they may be referred to in other cases to help interpret the law) are published on the Court’s judgment database.

• Written reasons are always reserved and provided at a later date. The Court of Appeal publishes all of its written reasons through the Court’s judgment database.

After the judgment and reasons are pronounced, the parties draft the order, which is then submitted to the registry and signed.

Style of Proceedings

The “style of proceedings” describes the way that parties are presented or listed on the cover page of a judgment. In civil appeals the style of proceedings lists the appellant(s) first and respondent(s) second, followed by any interveners. This practice directive provides more information.

Obtaining Official Versions

Signed copies of all judgments and reasons for judgment are kept in the registry file and may be accessed by contacting the court registry shown at the top of the judgment. A photocopying charge is payable.

Judgment Database

The judgment database contains reasons for judgment of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of British Columbia released since 1990. Not all reasons for judgment released during this period are available.

Many of the pre-2000 reasons for judgment were converted to a text format for publishing purposes. As a result, most of the formatting, other than basic layout, has been removed.

Search Engine Indexing

The policy of the Court is to block search engines such as Google from indexing the judgment database. However, reasons for judgment are sometimes republished by third parties (e.g., other websites) where such indexing is allowed. The privacy policy of both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal provides information about terms of access and reproduction.