Community Legal Assistance Society - BC Judicial Review Self-Help Guide

4. Interim Stay of Eviction

Filing a judicial review does not automatically put your eviction on hold. Unless you apply for, and obtain, a court order saying that your eviction is put on hold, your landlord can go ahead with the eviction while your judicial review is pending.

In appropriate cases, a judge of the BC Supreme Court may decide to put an eviction on hold temporarily while a judicial review is pending. To do this, the court makes an order called an “interim stay”.

To ask the court for an interim stay of an order of possession, you need to:

  1. File an application for judicial review of the order of possession and the decision that it is based on; and
  2. Make a court application asking for an interim stay.

It is up to the judge to decide in each case whether or not to order an interim stay. When a judge does decide to put an eviction on hold, s/he usually specifies that the interim stay is in effect only until a certain specific date or only until the court has dealt with the full application for judicial review.

You only need to apply for an interim stay if the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) decision you want to challenge relates to an eviction or some other urgent issue. If the RTB decision doesn’t deal with an urgent issue, there is no need to apply for an interim stay. For example, if your eviction date is far enough in the future that your judicial review can be heard before the eviction date, you may not need an interim stay.

If the court gives you an interim stay, it will be important to set the hearing of your judicial review for sometime before the interim stays runs out. Otherwise, your landlord will be able to evict you once the interim stay runs out.

Because your interim stay application will be tied to your judicial review, it is very important to seriously consider whether filing a judicial review is the right choice in your case. You need to consider whether there is a realistic chance that you will succeed on your application for interim stay and in your judicial review. The section Getting Started on a Judicial Review has more information on what kind of errors you are most likely to succeed with on judicial review.

You also need to consider whether pursing an interim stay and a judicial review are worth the risks and potential costs involved. Keep in mind that if you lose your application for an interim stay, or even if you get an interim stay but then lose your judicial review, you risk losing any control over how and when you move once the court makes a decision. It may be possible for your landlord to hire a court bailiff very quickly to remove you from your rental unit.

This website, jrbc.ca or judicialreviewbc.ca, is produced for educational purposes only. This website has information on common situations, but does not cover all possible situations. You should not rely on this website as legal advice. If you have a legal problem, you should get legal advice on your particular situation.

This website may contain inaccurate or misleading information. The law, including statutes, regulations, court rules, court practices, and court precedents can change without warning and those changes may not be reflected in this website. The Community Legal Assistance Society, its funders, its authors, its contributors, its editors, and the distributors of this website are not responsible for ensuring this website is up-to-date, ensuring the completeness or accuracy of the information contained in this website, or any form of damages or monetary loss caused by or attributed to the use of this website, including but not limited to claims based on negligence or breach of contract.

Site by the Community Legal Assistance Society. Content available under Creative Commons CC BY-NC licence. This guide is made possible by funding from the British Columbia Ministry of Justice and the Law Foundation of British Columbia. This guide was originally produced by David Mossop, Q.C.
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