The Court of Appeal of Alberta recently issued a ruling against Neil Alan Lymer clarifying the boundaries of constitutional protections in private legal disputes1. In the case of Lymer v. Jonsson, the court determined that the right to be tried within a reasonable time, a guarantee found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, does not apply to the sanctioning phase of civil contempt proceedings between private litigants. The decision addresses a complex area of law where the rules of civil lawsuits intersect with the penal nature of contempt of court, particularly when a person faces the possibility of imprisonment for failing to follow a court order.
The legal saga began more than a decade ago and involves Lymer, an undischarged bankrupt who had been involved in an investment scheme. Mr. Lymer had solicited funds from investors in a manner that was later found to be in breach of the Alberta Securities Act. As part of lengthy bankruptcy proceedings, various investors sought to trace the funds they had provided. In November 2014, a registrar in bankruptcy found Mr. Lymer in civil contempt of court. The finding was based on the determination that Mr. Lymer had sworn a false affidavit of records and had failed to comply with previous court orders requiring him to disclose relevant and material records regarding the missing funds.
At that time, the registrar imposed certain initial sanctions and referred the matter to a case management justice to determine if Mr. Lymer’s conduct was serious enough to warrant a term of imprisonment. Mr. Lymer challenged the jurisdiction of the registrar to make such an order, but the contempt finding was ultimately confirmed by the Court of Appeal in 2016. However, the matter did not end there. In early 2017, the registrar found that Mr. Lymer remained in contempt because he had still failed to fully disclose the required documents or adequately answer questions from creditors.
A sanctions hearing was eventually held in April 2018. Following that hearing, a justice of the Court of King’s Bench sentenced Mr. Lymer to 30 days of incarceration for his ongoing contempt. Mr. Lymer appealed this sentence, and in May 2020, the Court of Appeal set aside the jail term. The appellate court found that Mr. Lymer had not received a full and fair hearing because he had not been given the opportunity to testify under oath before the sanction was imposed. Consequently, the matter was sent back to the lower court to be heard again by a different judge.
The proceedings moved slowly over the next few years. It was not until late 2022 that a new case management justice ordered Mr. Lymer to produce further documents and attend questioning sessions. Those sessions took place in January and March of 2023. In June 2023, nearly nine years after the original contempt finding, Mr. Lymer applied for a stay of proceedings. He argued that his rights under Section 11(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms had been violated. This specific section of the Charter guarantees that any person charged with an offence has the right to be tried within a reasonable time.
Mr. Lymer relied heavily on the 2016 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Jordan. That landmark ruling established strict presumptive timelines for criminal trials, setting a limit of 30 months for cases heard in superior courts. Mr. Lymer argued that because his sanction hearing had been delayed for years, the proceedings should be stopped entirely. He contended that there was no principled reason why the right to a speedy trial should not apply to civil contempt, especially since he faced the prospect of going to jail.
The case management justice disagreed and dismissed Mr. Lymer’s application. The justice concluded that the Jordan analysis, which was designed for criminal prosecutions, could not be used to challenge delays in a civil contempt matter. Mr. Lymer was granted leave to appeal this specific issue to the Court of Appeal of Alberta. The primary question before the appellate court was whether the right to be tried within a reasonable time applies to the delay in sanctioning someone after they have been found in civil contempt.
In its decision released on December 23, 2025, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and affirmed that Section 11(b) of the Charter does not apply in these circumstances. The court emphasized that the Charter is a tool designed to regulate government action and protect individuals from the state. It does not generally impose constitutional duties on private parties involved in a lawsuit against one another. The court noted that because the contempt proceedings were initiated by a private respondent, Diane Jonsson, and not by a government prosecutor, the necessary element of state action was missing.
The justices explained the long standing distinction between criminal and civil contempt. Criminal contempt involves public defiance of the law and is usually prosecuted by the state. Civil contempt, by contrast, is primarily focused on coercing a private party to comply with a court order for the benefit of another private party. While the court acknowledged that civil contempt is quasi-criminal because it can result in a fine or imprisonment, it maintained that this does not automatically trigger the full suite of constitutional protections found in Section 11 of the Charter.
The court examined several precedents, including the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1986 decision in Dolphin Delivery, which established that the Charter does not apply to private litigation that is completely divorced from government connection. The court also addressed a recent conflicting decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal. In that case, Sutherland Estate v. Murphy, the Ontario court had found that civil contempt does attract certain Charter protections because of its public and penal dimensions. However, the Alberta Court of Appeal explicitly declined to follow that reasoning. The Alberta justices argued that it is neither appropriate nor necessary to impose constitutional duties on private litigants who are simply trying to enforce court orders in their own favour.
Furthermore, the court highlighted that the legal system already provides protections for those facing contempt charges without needing to invoke Section 11(b). For example, under common law rules that predate the Charter, an alleged contemnor has the right to be represented by a lawyer, the right to a fair hearing, and the right to have the case against them proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The court also noted that a person in civil contempt has the power to end the proceedings at any time by purging their contempt, which usually means following the original court order they disobeyed.
The court found that the nature of the “purge” in civil contempt makes the Jordan timelines for criminal trials a poor fit. In criminal cases, the state controls the clock and the prosecution. In civil contempt, the timing is often in the hands of the person who is in trouble. If that person takes years to produce the documents they were ordered to provide, they cannot later claim that the court took too long to sanction them. The court observed that throughout this case, Mr. Lymer had repeatedly claimed he was trying to purge his contempt by filing new affidavits and records, but those efforts were frequently found to be insufficient by the courts.
The judgment also pointed out that other legal mechanisms exist to deal with unreasonable delays in civil court. The Alberta Rules of Court and the legal doctrine of abuse of process can be used to stop proceedings if a delay becomes truly unfair or oppressive. However, the court found that these rules are distinct from the specific constitutional right to a trial within a reasonable time. By keeping these concepts separate, the court aimed to prevent the rules of criminal law from complicating the resolution of private civil disputes.
Ultimately, the Court of Appeal concluded that Mr. Lymer could not use the Charter to escape the potential consequences of the 2014 contempt finding. The court ruled that the sanctioning phase can proceed, and the question of whether Mr. Lymer should face incarceration or other penalties remains to be determined by the lower court. The decision reinforces the principle that while the courts will ensure fairness in how contempt is handled, the high standard of the Jordan timelines remains reserved for individuals facing the power of the state in criminal prosecutions.
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