Dylan Augruso

The moving defendants sought to strike the plaintiff's Superior Court action as an abuse of process.

The defendants had previously commenced 67 separate Small Claims Court actions against the plaintiff regarding HVAC rental contracts.

The plaintiff subsequently commenced this Superior Court action against the defendants, seeking damages for breach of contract and defamation, and seeking to traverse or stay the Small Claims Court actions.

The court found that the Superior Court action was duplicative of the plaintiff's defences in the Small Claims Court actions and sought to circumvent the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court.

The court concluded it would be an abuse of process to permit the Superior Court action to proceed while the Small Claims Court actions were pending, and ordered the action stayed.

Following a lengthy trial where the plaintiff was awarded $50,000 but the defendants obtained a costs award of over $3.4 million, the defendants moved to recover those costs from four non-party litigation loan providers who had advanced funds to the plaintiff.

The court declined to order costs against the non-parties, finding that while the loans carried exorbitant interest rates, providing them did not amount to an abuse of process under the 'person of straw' test or the court's inherent jurisdiction.

The court also noted that while litigation loans should be approved by the court in class proceedings, the statutory requirement to do so did not exist at the time the loans were made.

The applicants sought to remove land and PPSA registrations placed by the respondents on the basis of two promissory notes.

The court determined a preliminary issue of whether the promissory notes were enforceable on their face against the applicant corporations.

The court found that because the notes did not name the corporations, despite the individual signatory indicating he had authority to bind a corporation, the notes were only enforceable against the individual personally.

Consequently, the registrations against the corporate applicants were ordered removed.