De Cruz Lee v. Lee, 2015 ONSC 2012

CITATION: De Cruz Lee v. Lee, 2015 ONSC 2012

COURT FILE NO.: CV-06-1470-00FW

DATE: 20150327

SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - ONTARIO

RE: Angela De Cruz Lee vs. Larry Lee

BEFORE: Justice Skarica

COUNSEL: Ms. De Cruz Lee, unrepresented for the Applicant

R. Murthi, for the Respondent

COSTS ENDORSEMENT

[1] This is a costs order that is essentially meaningless.

[2] Ms. De Cruz Lee is on a disability pension. Despite having a university education from twenty years ago, she has never held a job and has never earned an income. She has no assets and no prospects. She is judgment proof and there is no real possibility of that changing unless she wins the lottery.

[3] Ms. De Cruz Lee is the losing party. She was self-represented. Mr. Lee was represented by his counsel Ms. Murthi.

[4] In my judgment, I held that Ms. De Cruz Lee met Mr. Lee in Malaysia in 1982; he brought her to Canada; he married her in 1985, he sponsored her for 10 years, he supported her while she went to university from 1992-1995; he fathered her child in 1994; he bought her a house in 1996, paying for the down payment and all the expenses, including mortgage, taxes, utilities, everything. She never had a job or income; she had businesses – none of them made any money.

[5] Mr. Lee’s reward for his part in this so-called marriage was to be abused and used. He took it; he was submissive and weak. Shortly after the house was purchased in 1996, she took the master bedroom; he was relegated to a downstairs bedroom. Even though the marriage was over, he stayed in the house; he was on a meagre military pension and had nowhere to go.

[6] After the house purchase, with Mr. Lee moved downstairs, Mr. Lee, according to Ms. De Cruz Lee, was “part of the furniture” but a valuable piece since he paid all the bills. Ms. De Cruz Lee was now single; she had a right to do whatever she pleased. She had numerous open and flagrant sexual liaisons. She abused and controlled her daughter who now needs counselling because as the daughter described it, Ms. De Cruz Lee was “the mother of all evil.”

[7] As indicated, Ms. De Cruz Lee had businesses. They never made money. One did a lot worse – her mining business. Ms. De Cruz Lee had no experience in that business. She dragged submissive Mr. Lee into it. Ms. De Cruz Lee was offered a sweetheart deal by experienced mining people who Michelle says her mother was having affairs with. Ms. De Cruz Lee put a CIBC mortgage on her home to leverage the deal. The deal went bad. The mortgage went unpaid. CIBC obtained a judgment and removed the Lees from their home.

[8] The daughter says it was the mother’s fault. The mother was not experienced in mining and made mistakes. Presumably one of them was to mix business with pleasure which usually does not turn out well. Ms. De Cruz Lee refused to take the blame. It was Larry Lee’s fault in part but it could not be her fault. Ms. De Cruz Lee determined she lost her house due to fraud. According to Ms. De Cruz Lee, over the years, the numbers of people joining this alleged fraud grew until it included banks, lawyers, business associates and eventually Mr. Lee himself.

[9] The party ended when Ms. De Cruz Lee phoned the police in 2010 after an argument with Larry Lee. CAS got involved. They found out that Ms. De Cruz Lee was sleeping with boyfriends in the master bedroom just yards away from where her under 16 year old daughter was sleeping. CAS told Ms. De Cruz Lee she would have to leave or they would have to apprehend the daughter. Mr. Lee was tolerating the situation. Ms. De Cruz Lee left but blamed it on Larry Lee. She told anyone who would listen, she was a victim. She had surgery and when she came home, Larry locked her out.

[10] Ms. De Cruz Lee got lawyers. Her second lawyer told her that her fraud allegations were fictional and had no chance of success. She disagreed. He got off the record stating, “Ms. De Cruz Lee appears intent on tilting at windmills based on fictions she has created and fomented over many years.” This lawyer was both astute and accurate. I determined after 9 days of trial there was no fraud. Ms. De Cruz Lee after receiving this wise lawyer’s opinion, rejected it. In fact, she did more than reject it. Her decision was that her lawyer had now joined the fraud; he had committed perjury and acted without instructions; he was acting in Mr. Lee’s best interests. Her rights had been violated. She, like a bull in a china shop, was going to represent herself and expose all the people who had conspired in this fraud against her.

[11] The trial started on November 18, 2014. It was scheduled for 1-2 days. It went on for 9 days. There was much tilting at windmills to be done. Ms. De Cruz Lee submitted that there was a large conspiracy of fraud launched against her for many years. I held that there was no fraud or conspiracy at all.

[12] There was yet a further allegation to be produced late in the day. During the middle of her cross-examination, the trial was adjourned over the Christmas holidays. I told Ms. De Cruz Lee not to talk to anybody about her case. She was glad; she needed a rest. Her idea of a rest was to speak to an MP about human trafficking. I had prosecuted human trafficking before my call to the bench. Ms. De Cruz Lee had googled me and discovered this.

[13] When the trial resumed in February, Ms. De Cruz Lee told me that she was told by the MP to tell me that Ms. De Cruz Lee had been human trafficked. I reminded her that I told her that she was not to discuss the case with anyone. She told me she had not. This was not true and thereafter, human trafficking became her other dominant theme. Mr. Lee had human trafficked her and was setting up her daughter for the same victimization. The real reason she had been locked out of the house was that Larry was sleeping with her daughter, (even though he was impotent since 1989, according to Ms. De Cruz Lee).

[14] The reason I am emphasizing her daughter, is that previously, Ms. De Cruz Lee testified the daughter was not his – she had not had sex with anyone when she got pregnant; it was, basically, an immaculate conception – only the second one in history. The child is indeed a blessing. She testified that she loves her father; she says he is a good dad. She lives with him; he is 73 and has problems with his memory. Mr. Lee testified that his daughter is a good daughter and with true affection, testified that she runs the place. Given his history, truer words were never spoken.

[15] After analyzing the evidence, I determined that Ms. De Cruz Lee was not human trafficked. My judgment details how it is she who victimizes and uses people. It is she who abuses and controls. It is she who is the predator.

[16] In a lengthy judgment, I ruled that there was no fraud, no conspiracy, no human trafficking and that Mr. Lee was granted the entire meagre sum left over from the proceeds of the sale of the home - $53,000.

[17] This trial ballooned from 1-2 days due to the conduct of Ms. De Cruz Lee in relentlessly pursuing this fraud fiction in a way that if she was a lawyer, a complaint would have been made to the Law Society. She violated my court order not to discuss the case while under cross-examination. The rules meant nothing to her. I told her repeatedly that she had to serve potential exhibits on the opposing party. She filed almost 60 exhibits and I am not aware that she served the other side with even one of them. She attempted to run the trial by ambush.

[18] She attempted to file countless hearsay exhibits which were filed as lettered exhibits. She even tried to file a letter from the Queen. The trial had to be delayed a number of times to allow us to dig into the continuing record to uncover material that she had but were poor copies or had missing pages. In submissions, she constantly referred to matters that were not in evidence but she persisted in doing it saying, “I am the evidence.”

[19] Most egregious were her scandalous allegations/submissions that had no evidential foundation. She alleged that Mr. Lee drugged her and then allowed other men to rape her. Mr. Lee sold her to a neighbour. She alleged that Mr. Lee had raped her in Malaysia and basically kidnapped her and brought her to Canada – she was driven to the airplane in Malaysia without going through immigration; she was the victim of human trafficking. Mr. Lee was a human trafficker of the worst kind. Mr. Lee raped her repeatedly and bought her from her mother. Mr. Lee was a monster who was sleeping with her daughter and controlling the daughter. He locked the applicant out of the house because he has an obsession with young girls. She was too old for him. She wanted a DNA test on Mr. Lee to determine if he was the father of her daughter. She believes, in submissions that, she was drugged and raped repeatedly while unconscious and this is how her child came to be. Mr. Lee was the one behind all of the fraud – he was the lowest common denominator. Mr. Lee has a drug habit – he is doing cocaine and heroin. Mr. Lee was a hired mercenary going into Africa to kill people. Mr. Lee committed fraud in 2001 on the initial house transfer to him. Mr. Lee should be in jail for human trafficking. She said in submissions that, “do you think he’s not going to drug my daughter and prostitute her?” “Mr. Lee managed to mould my child into an accessory to his criminal dealings and to mislead justice and sacrifice her own mother.” Even though she says he’s been impotent, he tried to rape her. He would force her face down onto his penis. In 2010, Mr. Lee let a neighbour into the house to rape her. Mr. Lee and her daughter had to clean up the sperm on the floor so that the police were unable to look at the evidence. There was no evidential foundation for any of these allegations and/or submissions. A significant portion of these allegations and submissions were not relevant for the purposes of determining the issues of this case, i.e. who owned the matrimonial home and equalization.

[20] Mr. Lee was not the only individual whose integrity was attacked without any evidential foundation. Ms. De Cruz Lee loves her daughter but wanted her charged with perjury. I found the daughter to be a highly credible witness. This was bad for Ms. De Cruz Lee as her daughter gave powerful, devastating evidence against her mother. Ms. De Cruz Lee took the position that she wanted to see this through so her daughter sees that her mother doesn’t run with her tail between her legs. The CIBC mortgage was a fraud. She wanted DNA tests on all the lawyers involved in the case. They included Rob Christie, the daughter’s godfather, Matthew Stone who commissioned one of Mr. Lee’s affidavits. Mr. Stone was biased. She wanted DNA on all of Mr. Lee’s friends who had been at the house until 2010 because Mr. Lee had pawned them off on her.

[21] One of Mr. Lee’s former lawyers, Rochelle Green, is also complicit in the fraud and human trafficking inflicted upon her. She knew Mr. Stone and Mr. Christie from her university days. And of course, she wanted DNA on Mr. Trenholme, whose alleged fraud and perjury have already been discussed. Mr. Trenholme’s conversations were recorded by her because he was threatening her. Mr. Lee is involved in a conspiracy with his lawyers and friends – Bigelow, Prem and lawyers Rob Christie, Matthew Stone and Rochelle Green. She submitted that Mr. Lee had total control of lawyers. Even trial counsel, Ms. Murthi, was part of the fraud and conspiracy against her. These submissions were scandalous and outrageous and had absolutely no factual foundation at all. Ms. Murthi handled the case with distinct professionalism and had to deal with the entry of numerous exhibits which she had no prior notice of.

[22] And so, I believe that it is fair to say that Ms. De Cruz Lee, in her so called marriage did whatever she wanted and had no regard on how it impacted others. I believe that it is fair to say that she continued this pattern in this trial. She pursued a path of trying to establish a fraud that only existed in her own mind. She had no hesitation in making scandalous and scurrilous allegations against her husband, daughter, and a host of lawyers and others without any factual basis or proof at all.

[23] Further, I provided her with a number of cases and excerpts of relevant legislation which I asked her to make submissions on. After reviewing this material, she provided me with the novel submission that the divorce laws do not apply to her because she has been the victim of human trafficking.

[24] She lost. It cannot have been a surprise as the trial played out just like Mr. Trenholme, an experienced family law lawyer, told her it would. The comments of Mr. Justice Quinn in The Hearing Clinic (Niagara Falls) Inc. v. 866073 Ontario Limited, et al, 2015 ONSC 1177, (SCJ), are appropriate to this situation:

I. INTRODUCTION

1 We have a marvellous legal system in Ontario. Anybody is permitted to walk into a courthouse and commence a civil law suit about anything. The court will patiently provide all of the time and services reasonably (and, sometimes, unreasonably) necessary. The matter may go on interminably (and, usually, does) but our accommodating nature does not abate; our patience persists; we listen, we sit and we listen some more. However, when the law suit ends, the idioms arrive: the chickens come home to roost;1 the jig is up;2 the second shoe is about to drop;3the cat is out of the bag;4 the fat lady sings;5 one sows what one reaps;6 and, here, so aptly, the cacophonous wail in the background is that of a piper, warming up and waiting to be paid7 -- the sum of $1,316,535.16, to be precise.

2 The costs of this action are now to be determined.

[25] It is my opinion that, Ms. De Cruz Lee’s conduct during this trial was entirely responsible for this matter going from 1-2 days to 9 days. She often was unprepared, lost her exhibits, refused to give any notice of documents or exhibits she was tendering, attempted to file numerous hearsay documents including a letter to the Queen which even she would know was not admissible, ignored a court order not to discuss her evidence and then lied about it, indulged in repeated scurrilous attacks on a number of innocent lawyers including trial counsel who did nothing to delay, hinder or confuse this litigation. In short her conduct in managing this trial was simply outrageous and amounted to an abusive attack on numerous innocent parties without any factual foundation at all.

[26] Our legal system allows parties to represent themselves. Courts bend over backwards to ensure that self-represented parties receive all the fairness and rights that individuals are entitled to. We even allow self-represented individuals to condemn and criticize innocent people without providing any proof and/or factual foundation.

[27] However, I believe it is appropriate for the courts, in turn, to condemn self-represented individuals, who take advantage of the opportunity granted to them to receive a fair trial, and then exploit that opportunity to, unfairly and illegitimately, castigate innocent people by recklessly making bold and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, conspiracy and illegality. In civil and family trials, that condemnation is reflected, in part, by the granting of a maximum costs award to the aggrieved, winning party.

[28] In my opinion, this is a case for full-indemnity costs in that this was a case where unsubstantiated allegations of dishonesty, illegality and conspiracy were advanced without merit. In Envoy Relocation Services Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General) 2013 ONSC 2622, [2013] O.J. No. 1999 (SCJ), Justice Annis indicated at paras. 114-117, 124, 125 as follows:

Full Indemnity

114 Given that a substantial cost award is an extraordinary remedy, it stands to reason that an award of full indemnity costs requires exceptional circumstances to those already considered extraordinary. That represents a very high bar for the plaintiffs to meet.

115 To compound the court's problems, there is little in the way of guidance on what constitutes "doubly" exceptional circumstances to award costs on a full indemnity scale. This is surprising given that "while fixing costs is a discretionary exercise, attracting a high level of deference, it must be on a principled basis". See: Clarington, supra at para. 40.

116 There have been a number of cases that have awarded full indemnity costs from which I would draw some basic summary principles underlying such an award. The overriding common thread that seems to appear through cases where costs have been awarded on a full indemnity scale is the strong sentiment that the matter, or the issue at least, should never have been brought before the court in the first place, leading to a reaction that the innocent party should not have had to pay a penny towards the costs of the litigation.

117 Probably the clearest examples of this involve plaintiffs initiating baseless litigation, particularly in situations where there has been a scurrilous attack on the administration of justice. The words of C.T. Hackland J. in Baryluk (c.o.b. Wyrd Sisters) v. Campbell, 2009 CanLII 34041 (ON SC) at paras. 9 and 10 are particularly appropriate to demonstrate this principle.

[9] I am of the opinion that this is one of the rare cases in which costs should be awarded on a full indemnity basis. As noted, I found that this action constituted a scurrilous attack on the administration of justice. The conduct of the defendants, judges of this court, was characterized by the plaintiff as case-fixing, abuse of public office, dishonesty and deceit in circumstances where there was no basis on the facts pleaded or submissions made to the court to support such outrageous allegations. Reckless attacks on the integrity of judicial officers must be recognized as conduct requiring chastisement and deterrence.

[10 There is ample authority for an award of full indemnity costs where unsubstantiated allegations of dishonesty, illegality, and conspiracy are advanced without merit. While full indemnity and substantial indemnity costs are an exception to the general rule and awarded only under special circumstances, allegations made or conduct by a party that is "reprehensible, scandalous, or outrageous" falls within the ambit of an award of full indemnity costs, see Shreiber v. Mulroney, 2007 CanLII 31754 (ON SC), 2007 CarswellOnt 5267 (S.C.J.) at paras. 8, 9, 11; Penney v. Penny, 2006 CarswellOnt 7605 at para. 29; Donmor Industries Ltd. v. Kremlin Canada Inc. 1992 CanLII 7543 (ON SC), 1992 CarswellOnt 1728 (Gen. Div.) at para. 14; and Apotex Inc. v. Egis Pharmaceuticals, 1991 CanLII 2729 (ON SC), 1991 CarswellOnt 3149 (Gen. Div.) at paras. 12-14. [Emphasis added.]

124 In summary, costs on a full indemnity scale appear to include the following generic elements:

(a) There was "grave positive misconduct" on the part of the blameworthy party;

(b) But for the blameworthy party's misconduct, the matter, or at least a significant component of the litigation, should never have reached the courts;

(c) The non-offending party did nothing to hinder, delay or confuse the litigation;

(d) The blameworthy party's conduct was contemptuous in forcing the "aggrieved party to exhaust legal proceedings to obtain that which was obviously his";

(e) The blameworthy party involved the court in its deceit by attempting to mislead it, which deception was only unearthed during the trial due to the intervention of the court, and which had a significant, if not dispositive impact, on the outcome of the trial;

(f) The matter involved a scurrilous attack on the administration of justice or waste of scarce judicial resources.

125 Generally, an award of full indemnity costs relates to some combination of these factors. See for example the case of Pirbhai v. Singh (c.o.b. Sarwan Auto Sales), 2011 ONSC 1366 (Ont. Sup. Ct.) where the court concluded at paragraphs 119-120 of its reasons as follows:

119 I comfortably conclude that the extreme and pervasive conduct of Singh, which I have chronicled in these Reasons, warrants full-indemnity costs: (1) he added, perhaps, 25 days or more to the evidence in the trial and years to its length; (2) he was not forthright with his documentary disclosure; (3) he fraudulently created documents; (4) he repeatedly lied under oath; and, (5) he attempted to perpetrate a fraud upon the plaintiff and upon the court. What else must be present in this case to attract full-indemnity costs?

120 Equity requires that the plaintiff not be put to one penny of expense in his pursuit of justice

[29] Self-represented litigants whose aim it is to protract court proceedings to force the other side to expend significant resources on legal costs due to scurrilous allegations that are without any evidentiary foundation and are entirely irrelevant to the issue before the Court will meet the hammer of a cost’s award. In our resource strapped court system, there must be deterrence against such conduct that not only penalises the opposing party but also penalises those litigants who have genuine claims to bring before a court but must have their justice delayed due to Court time being spent on this type of litigation,

[30] In the result, costs are awarded against Ms. De Cruz Lee on a full indemnity basis, fixed at $34,674.05 payable forthwith. There will be a further order dispensing for the need for Ms. De Cruz Lee to approve the form and content of this order.

Skarica J.

DATE: March 27, 2015

COURT FILE NO.: CV-06-1470-00FW

DATE: 20150327

SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - ONTARIO

RE: Angela De Cruz Lee vs. Larry Lee

BEFORE: Justice Skarica

COUNSEL: Ms. De Cruz Lee, unrepresented for the Applicant

R. Murthi, for the Respondent

COSTS ENDORSEMENT

Skarica J.

DATE: March 27, 2015