Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Plaintiff sought leave to amend her notice of civil claim to add new allegations of estoppel, res judicata, fraud, and deceit against the defendants in a motor vehicle accident case.

• Defendant Brayden Antone pleaded guilty to two charges related to the dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, which the plaintiff attempted to leverage as a bar to denying civil liability.

• Owner Diane Andrews denied consenting to the use of her vehicle despite prior statements to police and her insurer suggesting an informal arrangement allowing her subtenant to use the car.

• The court applied the "plain and obvious" threshold, finding the proposed amendments were "useless" and bound to fail under the applicable legal principles governing amendments to pleadings.

• No authority exists to support a cause of action founded on "tortious pleadings," and the plaintiff lacked standing to claim fraud based on statements made by Ms. Andrews to her own insurer.

• Application was dismissed with costs awarded to the defendants at Scale B, in any event of the cause.

The motor vehicle accident and the parties involved

On or about July 26, 2018, Patricia Ann Segarich was driving southbound on 176th Street in Surrey, British Columbia, when her vehicle was struck by a northbound vehicle that crossed the centre line. The offending vehicle was owned by Diane Gayle Andrews and was being driven at the time by Brayden Dylan Antone. Ms. Segarich filed her notice of civil claim on July 22, 2020, naming both Mr. Antone and Ms. Andrews as defendants.

The question of consent and the standing arrangement

Central to the plaintiff's case against Ms. Andrews was the issue of owner liability under s. 86 of the Motor Vehicle Act, RSBC 1996, c 318, which required the plaintiff to establish that Mr. Antone was operating the vehicle with Ms. Andrews' express or implied consent. The plaintiff alleged that Mr. Antone had obtained possession of the vehicle from Michael Campagna, Ms. Andrews' subtenant who had lived with her since May 2018. The plaintiff's theory posited a "standing arrangement" between Mr. Campagna and Ms. Andrews, whereby he was permitted to use her vehicle with few restrictions, and because Mr. Campagna's driver's licence was subject to certain restrictions, Ms. Andrews was aware that another person would be driving the vehicle when he used it.

Evidence supporting the plaintiff's position on consent

The plaintiff pointed to several pieces of evidence to support her claim that Ms. Andrews' denial of consent was false. These included Ms. Andrews' responses during a police interview on August 6, 2018, which the plaintiff argued confirmed the standing arrangement; the general occurrence traffic form completed by police, which did not indicate the vehicle was stolen; and a statement Ms. Andrews gave to her insurer in which she acknowledged that she and Mr. Campagna had an "arrangement" allowing him to take the car without permission, provided he had another driver with a valid driver's license. The plaintiff argued that Ms. Andrews' misrepresentations to her insurer caused the insurer to treat the plaintiff's claim as uninsured.

The plaintiff's application to amend the pleadings

The plaintiff brought an application seeking leave to amend her notice of civil claim in two respects. First, she sought to plead that the defendants — and Mr. Antone in particular — were estopped from denying liability at trial by virtue of Mr. Antone's guilty plea to two charges related to the dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, invoking the doctrines of res judicata and issue estoppel. Second, she sought to add allegations that Ms. Andrews committed the torts of deceit and fraud in denying that she had consented to Mr. Antone's use of the vehicle.

The legal framework for amending pleadings

The court, presided over by Associate Judge Robinson, considered the application under Rule 6-1 of the Supreme Court Civil Rules, which confers broad discretion to grant leave to amend pleadings. Drawing on the principles set out in Jazette Enterprises Ltd. v. Gould, 2022 BCSC 2206 (aff'd 2023 BCSC 180), the court noted that amendments ought to be allowed unless they fail to disclose a cause of action, cause prejudice to a party's ability to defend, or are considered "useless" — meaning plainly and obviously bound to fail, as established in Berthin v. Berthin, 2019 BCCA 157. The court also noted, citing McNaughton v. Baker, 1988 CanLII 3036 (BC CA), that no evidence in support of the amendment needs to be filed by the party seeking it, and that proposed amendments are to be considered on their face.

The court's analysis of the estoppel and res judicata amendments

On the proposed estoppel and res judicata pleadings, the court found that a guilty plea in a criminal proceeding is not a definitive capitulation to liability in a related civil proceeding. Rather, subject to certain, narrow exceptions, it is evidence of liability. The court concluded that the plaintiff did not require a specific pleading of estoppel to argue at trial that Mr. Antone's guilty plea was evidence of his liability, and that adding such a pleading would not preclude either defendant from continuing to deny liability for the Accident. These proposed amendments served no discernible purpose and were therefore declined.

The court's analysis of the fraud and deceit amendments

Regarding the proposed fraud and deceit claims, the court examined two alleged instances. In relation to Ms. Andrews' statements to her insurer, the court found that even assuming the statements were untrue, the only conceivable person to seek redress in respect of the untruth would be the insurer itself, not the plaintiff. Although misleading the insurer may have affected the plaintiff's ultimate ability to recover on any judgment obtained, this did not give rise to a cause of action in fraud for the plaintiff. In relation to the position taken by Ms. Andrews in her response to civil claim, the court observed that no authority exists to support liability being founded upon "tortious pleadings." Pleadings are, in many respects, aspirational — they set out what a party says it will prove or intends to prove at trial, and are often drafted with imperfect knowledge and based on an incomplete body of evidence. Allowing tort claims based on an opposing party's pleadings would fundamentally undermine the purpose of the pleading process and would open a potentially endless stream of claims. The appropriate recourse for unfounded or obviously untrue allegations in pleadings is not in tort, but rather a matter which may be addressed by an order as to costs at the conclusion of the proceeding.

The ruling and outcome

The court ultimately dismissed the plaintiff's application in its entirety, finding that she had failed to meet the low threshold necessary to establish that the proposed amendments were not "useless" and had failed to raise allegations which, assuming they are true, constitute a reasonable cause of action. The defendants, Brayden Dylan Antone and Diane Gayle Andrews, were entirely successful on the application and were awarded their costs at Scale B, in any event of the cause. No specific monetary amount was determined in this decision, as the ruling addressed only the procedural question of amending the pleadings, not the merits of the underlying motor vehicle accident claim.