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 ...

A promissory note is a written promise by a borrower to pay a sum of money to a lender upon the occurrence of an event, usually a demand for payment.  Promissory notes are often used by friends and family members to record loans made between them.  No one expects there to be problems at the outset and all are sure the loan will be repaid at some point.  But how long do promissory notes ...

A recent case from the BC Supreme Court has highlighted yet again that a guarantee or indemnity of a lease (here now referred to as an “Indemnity”) does not necessarily assure payment to a landlord following a default by a tenant.  The terms of the Indemnity must be carefully scrutinized and examined to determine if the specific circumstances outlined in the document are ...

Regrettably, this appears to be a case where the office of the Director of Civil Forfeiture has taken zealous measures outside the proper bounds of its home statute with the unfortunate effect of depriving a citizen of lawful possession and use of her property, putting that citizen to what I suspect is considerable expense and inconvenience to retrieve her property.

Those ...

On September 16, 2014, I blogged concerning the filing of a Notice of Civil Claim in British Columbia in Adolfo Garcia v. Tahoe Resources Inc.  That case concerns a claim against a Canadian parent company for mining activities conducted through a foreign subsidiary in Guatemala.  I noted a trend towards seeking redress against Canadian parent mining companies in Canadian ...

It is common for contracts to contain exclusion clauses limiting the liability of one party in the event of a breach.  Professional service providers often seek to limit their liability to the fees paid to them.  Movers limit their exposure to the value of the goods transported.  Contracts for the sale of land generally cap a purchaser’s remedy for breach to the return of the ...

In a decision released November 10, 2014, the BC Court of Appeal rejected an attempt to create a novel common law defence in the law of defamation against so-called SLAPP suits. In Northwest Organics, Limited Partnership v. Maguire, 2014 BCCA 454, the court upheld the chambers judge’s decision and declined to radically change the law of defamation by introducing such a ...

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 ...

On November 13, 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada released its much anticipated decision in Bhasin v. Hrynew, 2014 SCC 71.  In its decision, the Supreme Court of Canada for the first time expressly recognized “good faith” as an organizing principle in the operation of contract law in Canadian common law provinces.  This is a significant alteration to the law of contracts in ...