Suspended Vancouver lawyer must pay neighbours $30,000 for time spent handling pseudo-legal dispute

A suspended Vancouver lawyer who lost a “frivolous” case against her neighbor over a glass partition between her patio and house has been ordered to pay the woman nearly $30,000 in legal costs, likely ending a case that legal experts had described as highly unusual.

Naomi Arbabi had filed a complaint against her neighbour Colleen McLelland for trespassing. McLelland declined to be interviewed, but her lawyer spoke to CBC News on Tuesday.

“She is satisfied and vindicated by the fact that she received fair compensation for the proceedings she had to endure,” said Greg Palm, managing partner at Hamilton Duncan Law Corporation.

One expert in pseudo-legal arguments called the case “magical gibberish,” while another said it was “extraordinarily rare” for a practicing lawyer to make such a claim. The judge who dismissed the case said it bore the hallmarks of claims made by OPCA (Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments) plaintiffs – legal theories favored by fringe groups such as Sovereign Citizens and Freemen on the Land.

Settlement offer over $14,000

In her original lawsuit in October, Arbabi accused McLelland of trespassing by obstructing her view of the mountains when the owners of her Fairview apartment complex installed a 5.5-foot-tall opaque glass privacy screen on McLelland’s rooftop deck.

A judge dismissed the case in January and ordered Arbabi to pay special costs – money “generally awarded as punishment for conduct the court finds reprehensible,” Palm said. The only question remaining was the amount Arbabi had to pay.

According to Monday’s ruling, McLelland offered Arbabi a deal: They could reduce the costs to just over $14,200 if Arbabi paid by March 8.

Arbabi agreed to the dollar amount, but said she would pay it back in installments over the next 40 years.

McLelland did not want to wait until 2064 and so the matter went to court again.

In her decision, Special Registrar Meg Gaily said Arbabi had to pay McLelland just over $29,500 to cover the time and expenses she spent representing herself. She also said McLelland had to spend more time researching and learning civil procedure law “to deal with the OPCA litigation than she otherwise would have.”

Gaily said the special costs would also be used to reimburse Palm and the legal team that assisted McLelland pro bono.

“Ms. Arbabi has chosen to act in a manner that is contrary to the oath she and I swore in our legal practice, which is to uphold the rule of law and not to bring proceedings on frivolous pretexts,” Palm said when asked why he took on the case pro bono.

“Ultimately, this award reflects the fact that such actions have consequences.”

Arbabi has the right to request a review of a registrar’s decision from the court within 14 days. CBC News has reached out to Arbabi for comment through her guardian, a practising lawyer who is charged with managing or winding up a law firm. The guardian referred the request to the Law Society of BC, which declined to contact Arbabi, citing confidentiality.

When British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Susanna Hughes dismissed Arbabi’s original lawsuit earlier this year, she said the “vain and vexatious” lawsuit was an attempt by Arbabi to misuse the court “for the purposes of her fictitious court.”

The judge said the lawsuit lacked a reasonable legal basis and had “many hallmarks” of the OPCA plaintiffs’ claims.

The costs decision states that Arbabi accepted responsibility for the action but “denied that she was an OPCA claimant”.

Arbabi returned his law license in January

In her original lawsuit, Arbabi identified herself as “I, a woman” and said the case would be heard in the “Naomi Arbabi Court.”

She wrote that “this is a claim based on the laws of the land and not a complaint based on any statute or ordinance” and demanded compensation of $1,000 per day for each day the glass partition was there – which would have added up to more than $130,000 at the time the claim was dismissed.

When Arbabi appeared in court in November to fight McLelland’s motion to dismiss her lawsuit, she said she was acting as a “living, breathing, living woman” and not as a lawyer. She also denied any affiliation with organized pseudo-legal groups.

Hughes ordered Arbabi to pay special costs for violating the oath all lawyers admitted to practice in British Columbia must take, which includes a promise not to “promote litigation upon frivolous pretexts.”

Arbabi was a lawyer in good standing with the Law Society of BC when she filed her lawsuit last fall. She surrendered her license to practice law in the province in January of this year, several weeks after it was revoked in connection with the McLelland case.

Arbabi agreed to meet with a reporter in November to discuss her lawsuit, but refused to answer any questions upon arrival. Instead, she read a note warning of legal consequences if an article was published without her consent.

In a later interview on a podcast, Arbabi described her legal approach as “law for humanity.” Arbabi said she began taking courses through a website called Sovereign’s Way after experiencing what she described as an awakening during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said she had come to see the legal system as a board game in which she did not want to play.