The plaintiff estate sought leave to amend its statement of claim mid-trial in a long-running family business dispute involving an oppression remedy claim.
The court granted leave for some amendments, finding they merely provided further particulars of the originally pleaded misappropriation of funds (e.g., the Stapledon loan allegations and the Stoke Lacey sale).
However, the court refused leave for other amendments (e.g., failure to pay property taxes and failure to complete audited financial statements), finding they constituted new, statute-barred causes of action that would cause actual and presumed non-compensable prejudice to the incapacitated defendant due to inordinate delay.
The court also refused amendments that amounted to a collateral attack on findings made in the first part of the bifurcated trial.
