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July, 2001
To Members of APSHA Communications to Members As you are aware, as a result of the representative action being struck out by the Court in May 2000, it was necessary to proceed with the litigation by filing Statements of Claim specifically naming as plaintiffs those APSHA members, and co?owners, who provided timely instructions to our lawyers. A considerable amount of time and effort on the part of our law firm and our volunteers went into obtaining instructions from thousands of members, and, in the end, 54 actions were filed, which actions included approximately 2900 single family dwellings and 39 condominium associations. APSHA has been receiving, by e?mail, voice mail, and faxes, requests for information. We have been unable to provide a timely response for a number of reasons, which are outlined below. The change from a representative action to actions with thousands of individual plaintiffs has required revisions to our database. A database has been developed by the Administrator and Secretary of APSHA to assist our lawyers in the litigation. This database also forms the basis of our mailout list. The computer running our database was out of commission for several weeks in early June. That also meant that our primary phone/fax hotline (438-0326), which is handled by the computer, was unusable for incoming calls and faxes. As well, our primary e-mail account (apsha@v-wave.com) could not be monitored. This has no doubt caused frustration for those members who expect and deserve responses to their communications to us; but it has also been a very trying time for our Administrator in particular. Update on the Legal Case A new case management judge has been assigned to usher these actions through the Court ? Mr. Justice Clackson was appointed case management judge around the middle of May and he convened a meeting of both counsel on May 23rd, and again on June 29th. As previously reported, the actions which have been filed are stayed with the exception of up to 20 sample or test cases. Those test cases will proceed through examinations for discovery and trial with respect to the liability issues. Counsel are in the process of selecting the sample cases. Any person being considered as a sample case will be contacted prior to any decision being finalized. The production of documents has been substantially completed. The next step is proceeding with examinations for discovery. Examination for discovery is a procedure whereby parties to an action are questioned, under oath, about matters in issue in the lawsuit. Only the sample case plaintiffs will be examined by the government lawyers. Our lawyers will be examining representatives of the Government. Justice Clackson has directed that discoveries are to be concluded by December 31, 2001. We anticipate that examinations for discovery will commence this summer. Upon completion of discoveries, the sample cases should be ready to proceed to trial. Next Newsletter Our next newsletter will be sent in mid?August. In that newsletter, we will advise you of our Annual General Meeting (AGM) - likely to be held in the first two weeks of September. We will also use this coming mail out to advise members of their status with respect to the payment of their APSHA annual membership fee. (The fees were due by the end of May; however, some members' cheques have not yet been cashed yet, and other members' fees have not been submitted yet.) Members who have not yet submitted their fees are requested to do so as soon as possible. Summary Thank you for your patience as we work through this busy time. We hope that our members have an enjoyable summer! We are all looking forward to seeing some progress on the legal case this year.
Yours truly,
Fred D. Holtslag
Phone/fax: (780) 419-2550
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