Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

On January 27, the British Columbia Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in Bea v. The Owners Strata Plan, LMS 2138, 2015 BCCA 31, upholding the lower court’s decision finding the Plaintiff and her husband in contempt of Court and granting the extraordinary relief that the Plaintiff's strata unit (the “Unit”) be seized and sold by the respondent (the “Owners”). In ...

British Columbia has 28 Supreme Court registries scattered around the eight judicial districts (known as “counties”) being Cariboo, Kootenay, Nanaimo, Prince Rupert, Vancouver, Victoria, Westminster and Yale.  Ordinarily, a civil claim or petition can be commenced in whichever of those registries the claimant chooses.  However, for some types of claims there are ...

In an earlier blog post, we reviewed what the Supreme Court of Canada heralded as a “shift in culture” in Hryniak v. Mauldin, 2014 SCC 7 with respect to the availability of summary judgment.  While we had expected BC Courts to therefore be even more receptive to summary adjudications than they had in past, there was some initial hesitation in Alberta given the difference ...

One of the most exasperating aspects of civil litigation for clients is the issue of court ordered costs. Ordinarily, the party that wins a case is entitled to have their “costs” paid by the other side. The court’s ability to award costs is discretionary and, as a result, often difficult to predict.

There are, generally speaking, two types of costs awards: “party and ...

Authors: Kinji Bourchier and Amy Nathanson.

In the recent Ontario Superior Court case of Moore v. Getahun, 2014 ONSC 237 (“Moore”) the Court answered yes to this question and took a very restrictive approach to communications between counsel and experts.  Almost all civil litigators across the spectrum of cases deal with experts. Experts can play a ...

Two of the main benefits of private arbitration are said to be speed and finality. However, the long running case of Sattva Capital Corporation v. Creston Moly Corporation has been a prime example of how court intervention into the arbitration process can lead to arbitration being anything but speedy or final. I first blogged about this case on May 9, 2011 when it had ...

Earlier this year, I blogged about the civil forfeiture case of B.C. (Director of Civil Forfeiture) v. Wolff.  That appellate decision set guidelines for the trial courts on what and how to consider the “interest of justice” when faced with a forfeiture claim.   It confirmed the “dominant principles” of proportionality and fairness in weighing whether to order ...

On March 2, 2013, the Emergency Intervention Disclosure Act, S.B.C. 2012, c. 19, was quietly enacted.  This statute had been on the books since 2012 but not in force.  The purpose of the Act is to authorize the involuntary sampling of bodily fluids where those samples are not being offered voluntarily.  For example, it covers situations such as a police officer or medic being spat ...

Canada has two official languages – English and French - arising from our unique heritage as a country.  Given this status, one may have assumed both official languages were freely used in the courts across the country.  Not so says the British Columbia Court of Appeal which recently ruled that documents, not in the English language, without a certified translation cannot be ...

The sky is falling!  Well, not really but some might think so given that the provincial government has introduced a bill, currently in first reading, that will bring some significant changes to the law governing limitation periods.  Limitation periods establish the time within which a lawsuit must be commenced, failing which it will be barred whatever its merits.  In the ...