Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

B.C.’s Civil Forfeiture Office, still a relatively new entity, is becoming more aggressive in its approach to seeking forfeiture of what it sees as illicitly acquired assets or property that is being used for an unlawful purpose.  In September 2011, the Director of Civil Forfeiture seized five “high-end sports cars” for allegedly street racing.  In October 2011, the ...

One of the most common forms of estate planning, particularly among couples, is not to have any plan at all.  That is often a very bad idea for a wide variety of reasons.  However, there are circumstances where it is a good idea and can avoid many estate problems.  This can be done by owning all assets in joint tenancy with your spouse.  Generally, when one of the joint tenants dies, the ...

In the undocumented world of family relations and finances, money is often provided by one person to another without the exact nature of the transaction being discussed, understood or documented.  Mum provides $20,000 to child to be used towards the purchaser of a house or to fund a year at school.  Granddad pays $15,000 towards a grandchild’s purchase of a business.  Is this ...

Earlier this year, I wrote a short blog on the right of step-children to claim an inheritance from a step-parent or step-grandparents. The upshot was that, absent a specific bequest in the will, step-children do not have a right of inheritance from a step-parent.  This conclusion was recently made even more forcefully by the B.C. Court of Appeal in the decision Peri v ...

A common fraud perpetrated on financial institutions is the deposit of counterfeit cheques.  The account holder distances themselves from the fraud by portraying the payment as one they thought was part of a legitimate transaction.  The funds are often withdrawn or transferred before the cheque is returned as counterfeit, usually within a matter of days.  After the ...

If Cinderella had not married a prince, she might have cared a bit more about her legal status as a stepchild to her evil stepmother.  It is common ground that the relationships between stepparents and stepchildren can be difficult.  Vince Dixon of the Chicago Tribune recently provided sage guidance on how to mitigate some of those potential problems.  Communication is ...

There is a card in Monopoly that reads “Bank error in your favour” and which entitles you to keep the $200 wrongly credited to your account.   Banks can make errors.  Banks are also frequently the victims of fraud.  The result of this is often that a lucky customer’s account suddenly has a much larger balance.  However, unlike Monopoly, when this occurs, the bank will do all it ...

A West Vancouver homeowner was recently dinged with a civil judgment for $97,000 for cutting down ten trees on his neighbour’s property.  This included a $35,000 award for punitive damages, one of the largest such awards in many years. 

The punitive damages were awarded because the defendant was reckless in determining the location of his property line.  He made no inquiry of ...

In April 2006, B.C.’s Civil Forfeiture Act (“CFA”) came into force.  Seven Canadian provinces now have similar legislation. 

The CFA provides a mechanism for the government, through the Director of the Civil Forfeiture Office, to seek the forfeiture of the “proceeds of unlawful activity”.  Forfeiture is ordered by the Court when it is proven that property is ...

A Vancouver realtor, Wilbur Roshinsky, was recently suspended by the Real Estate Council of B.C. for taking advantage of a 90 year old spinster suffering from dementia.  The realtor arranged to sell the spinster’s home to a developer for a price well below market rate.  CBC reports that the transaction was only caught and cancelled when the spinster’s lawyer learned of its ...