Show Me the Money?

For lawyers looking for clients and others considering additional financial consequences of the G20, the just released Vancouver (City) v Ward 2010 SCC 27 is perhaps a collection manual for those who were improperly arrested at the G20.

The facts of Ward. I’m quoting the headnote:

During a ceremony in Vancouver, the city police department received information that an unknown individual intended to throw a pie at the Prime Minister who was in attendance. Based on his appearance, police officers mistakenly identified W as the would‑be pie‑thrower, chased him down and handcuffed him. W, who loudly protested his detention and created a disturbance, was arrested for breach of the peace and taken to the police lockup. Upon his arrival, the corrections officers conducted a strip search. While W was at the lockup, police officers impounded his car for the purpose of searching it once a search warrant had been obtained. The detectives subsequently determined that they did not have grounds to obtain the required search warrant or evidence to charge W for attempted assault. W was released approximately 4.5 hours after his arrest. He brought an action in tort and for breach of his rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms against several parties, including the Province and the City. With respect to the strip search and the car seizure, the trial judge held that, although the Province and the City did not act in bad faith and were not liable in tort for either incident, the Province’s strip search and the City’s vehicle seizure violated W’s right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure under s. 8 of the Charter. The trial judge assessed damages under s. 24(1) of the Charter at $100 for the seizure of the car and $5,000 for the strip search. The Court of Appeal, in a majority decision, upheld the trial judge’s ruling.

 
The SCC affirmed the $5,000 award but not the $100 award. It didn’t quite say de minimis about that – it said no injury – but that’s the air.

From the reasons:

[64] In this case, the need for compensation bulks large. Mr. Ward’s injury was serious. He had a constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, which was violated in an egregious fashion. Strip searches are inherently humiliating and degrading regardless of the manner in which they are carried out and thus constitute significant injury to an individual’s intangible interests: R. v. Golden, 2001 SCC 83, [2001] 3 S.C.R. 679, at para. 90.

[65] The corrections officers’ conduct which caused the breach of Mr. Ward’s Charter rights was also serious. Minimum sensitivity to Charter concerns within the context of the particular situation would have shown the search to be unnecessary and violative. Mr. Ward did not commit a serious offence, he was not charged with an offence associated with evidence being hidden on the body, no weapons were involved and he was not known to be violent or to carry weapons. Mr. Ward did not pose a risk of harm to himself or others, nor was there any suggestion that any of the officers believed that he did. In these circumstances, a reasonable person would understand that the indignity resulting from the search was disproportionate to any benefit which the search could have provided. In addition, without asking officers to be conversant with the details of court rulings, it is not too much to expect that police would be familiar with the settled law that routine strip searches are inappropriate where the individual is being held for a short time in police cells, is not mingling with the general prison population, and where the police have no legitimate concerns that the individual is concealing weapons that could be used to harm themselves or others: Golden, at para. 97. 

Does anyone detect just a trace of sarcasm? irony? annoyance? in the the last sentence of [65]?

Anyone want to bet there won’t be a Ward-influenced fact pattern on some constitutional law test in some Canadian law school over the next few terms?

Addendum:

At first glance, it appears court didn’t suggest that each of “appropirate” and “just” in “appropriate and just” have different meanings. The court discussed the meaning of the phrase. We have have just had, serendipitously, a column touching on that phrase in the Charter: Les Green’s “Beyond Justice“: https://www.slaw.ca/2010/07/15/beyond-justice/