Eye On Regulation

• Maddison
  Croden

  Maddison
  Croden

  view bio

In Wang v Law Society of Alberta, the Court of Appeal of Alberta provided an important reminder to regulators and complainants about the ability of complainants to seek review from the Court on the merits of a disciplinary decision.

The Wang decision involved a complainant who retained a lawyer in 2016 to assist her in appealing a costs order against her. That appeal did not proceed and was deemed abandoned. In 2022, the complainant made a complaint about the lawyer to the Law Society of Alberta. The complaint was summarily dismissed by the Law Society’s Executive Director. The complainant appealed the dismissal of her complaint to the Appeal Panel of the Law Society, which upheld the Executive Director’s decision and dismissed the complaint. The complainant then appealed that decision to the Court of King’s Bench and later, the Court of Appeal.

At the Court of Appeal, the Court dismissed the complainant’s appeal and reiterated the following important principles about the rights of a complainant to seek review of a regulator’s decision regarding their complaint:

• A complainant in professional regulatory proceedings is not a party to those proceedings, unless made one by the governing legislation;
  
  
• A complainant does not seek a personal remedy through professional discipline. It is the role of the regulator, and not the complainant, to ensure that professional standards are met;
  
  
• As a non-party to the disciplinary proceedings, a complainant has very limited rights to commence judicial review of a regulator’s decision regarding their complaint. The complainant has no standing to seek judicial review of the merits of the regulator’s decision, including a decision not to proceed with disciplinary action; and
  
  
• A complainant who has a statutory right to appeal a decision dismissing a complaint has a limited right to seek judicial review of the fairness of the appeal process. The duty of fairness owed is at the low end of the spectrum and judicial review will be granted only if the appeal process was conducted in a fundamentally unfair manner.

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