In the Court of King's Bench, you file at the "appropriate judicial centre," and rule 3.3 of the Alberta Rules of Court decides which one that is. It is the judicial centre closest by road to where all the parties live or do business in Alberta. If no single centre is closest to everyone, the person starting the lawsuit picks one of the parties and files at the centre closest to that party. This tool does that calculation for you.

Thirteen: Calgary, Drumheller, Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, High Level, Hinton, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Peace River, Red Deer, St. Paul and Wetaskiwin. Every King's Bench action is filed at one of them. The appropriate one for your case depends on where the parties are located, not on where the events happened, unless a party does business in more than one place.

By road. Rules 3.3(1)(a) and 3.3(1)(b) both say "by road," and rule 3.4 repeats it. The difference is not academic: on Courtready's own data, straight-line distance points to a different judicial centre than road distance for about one Alberta community in thirteen. Wabasca, for example, is closer to Fort McMurray as the crow flies but 93 kilometres closer to Edmonton by road. This tool measures by road.

Both. Unlike small claims venue rules in some other provinces, rule 3.3 measures to the Alberta residences or places of business of all the parties, and that includes the person starting the lawsuit. Leave a party's address blank only if they have no Alberta location at all; they are then left out of the calculation, though they can still matter if anyone later asks a judge to move the case.

Your filing loses its presumption of correctness. In Odland v Odland, 2017 ABCA 397, the Court of Appeal held that rule 3.3 works much like a presumption: file in compliance and anyone wanting to move the case must prove your choice was unreasonable, but file elsewhere and you would have to justify your own choice if the other side objects. That is how the plaintiff in Pacific Investments v Wood Buffalo lost a fight over venue and had its Calgary action moved to Fort McMurray.

Rule 3.3(2) treats that party as being at whichever of its locations is nearest to where the matters in issue arose or were transacted. This step runs before any tiebreak, and it can change the answer entirely, as it did in Pacific Investments. The tool asks where the dispute arose whenever a business party has more than one Alberta location.

Yes, in two ways. Under rule 3.5 a judge can transfer an action where it would be unreasonable to carry it on where it is, judged on the balance of convenience. And in a claim for possession of land, rule 3.4 lets a defendant require the clerk to transfer the case, with no judge involved, unless it was filed at the centre closest by road to the land or to a defendant's Alberta residence. The tool flags rule 3.4 exposure for each option.

No. It applies the Court of King's Bench rules only. A civil claim in the Alberta Court of Justice may be filed at any Court of Justice location, and it is the clerk who sets the hearing location under the Court of Justice Civil Procedure Regulation. Those are different rules with a different structure, so do not use this tool for a Court of Justice claim.