Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan
Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan
When Your Outfit Is “Red To Hide Blood,” You’ve Made Bad Choices
A 20-year online feud that began on a community website ended with a meticulously planned attack inside a BC courtroom—red clothes to hide blood, a packed suitcase, a knife and a hammer, and alcohol for courage. We walk through how the trial judge weighed mental health evidence against extensive planning, why the NCRMD standard remains a high bar, and how appellate courts defer to sentencing judges unless there’s a clear error. You’ll hear exactly why a 12-year sentence held firm despite arguments for reduced moral culpability.
Then we pivot to a case that could change how your parcels land at your door. Consumer Protection BC ruled that “delivered to the consumer” means more than GPS at your address and a hand-off to an unknown person. When a buyer never saw his $500‑plus item, Amazon leaned on coordinates and history; the regulator leaned on the statute. The result: a full refund, legal costs, and a $10,000 penalty. We break down distance sales contracts, the 30‑day delivery rule, and why terms of service can’t erase statutory rights. For shoppers, this means real recourse when packages vanish. For sellers, it means building proof that the consumer actually received the goods—think signatures, verified IDs, or explicit consent for alternative delivery methods.
Along the way, we highlight the role of courthouse sheriffs in preventing tragedy, the practical meaning of mitigation at sentencing, and the evidence standards that separate suspicion from proof in both criminal and consumer contexts. If you care about justice, safety, and what “delivered” really means, this conversation will sharpen your understanding and give you steps you can use today.
If you found this useful, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find it. What’s your take: should high‑value deliveries always require a signature?
Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed.
Good afternoon, Michael. How are we doing? Hey, good afternoon. I'm doing great. Dismissed. Now, does the dismissed apply to the in a courtroom or or what happened here?
Michael Mulligan:Oh no. So this was this was a uh woman who was convicted uh not that long ago of attempted murder, and the attempted murder occurred literally in a courtroom in BC. Wow. And the background of the attempted murder in the courtroom, it started all the way back in 2005. Uh and the people involved, the accused and the person who was uh uh survived the murder attempt, uh met online on a website described by the Court of Appeal as one designed to help the Chinese immigr immigrant community connect in Canada. Uh and certainly the website succeeded in connecting these two people, uh, but not in a positive way. Um the uh both the uh accused uh uh appellant, I guess, uh, and the victim of the uh attack uh after meeting on this website commenced a what was described as an intense online feud uh which went on for years, uh, which resulted in both of them posting repeatedly insulting and personal attacks on one another, uh, that eventually in 2016 resulted in one of the people, the person who was uh uh survived the attack in the courtroom, suing the other woman for defamation. And then that person countersued. So they sued each other for defamation, things that they were posting online. They both succeeded. They both were found to have engaged in uh defamatory conduct online. One of them was awarded $9,000, and the other person was awarded $8,500. So, you know, the net result $500. But uh the accused in this case, the appellant, uh, was also found guilty of uh contempt uh for continuing to post things online during the course of those proceedings, uh, and so there was an award of two thousand dollars for that. So I guess it's twenty five hundred bucks after all of that. Well, it didn't end there. Uh the uh person who was eventually survived the attack uh brought another application uh for uh contempt uh again uh against the accused, uh, and then the accused requested an in-person hearing uh in on uh May 25th, 2021. Uh and it was at that court appearance both women showed up for this court appearance, um and the uh appellant accused at the time uh was uh uh very unfortunate. She obviously took a uh number of steps in preparing for what happened there. Uh she'd armed herself with a knife and hammer before coming to court, she drank alcohol to bolster her courage. Uh she brought a suitcase either to take to jail or flee the attack, unclear which, uh, and dressed in all red to disguise the bloodstains. So that's not a good thing. Uh and then the uh accused uh or the appellant waited uh in the courtroom, and before the judge appeared in the courtroom, uh she attacked the other woman from behind, pummeling her with a hammer and stabbing her uh with a knife repeatedly, and she inflicted at least ten stab and hammer blows before fortunately a sheriff entered the courtroom and likely saved the life of the woman who was being attacked. That's the factual background.
Adam Stirling:Wow.
Michael Mulligan:Uh, you don't see that every day. And I must admit, comment on the sheriff thing. We're very fortunate to have sheriffs at the uh courthouses. They're they're independent of the police, and the concept there is you know, the police are often witnesses in cases, right? And you don't want to have a circumstance where a judge is being protected by the person who's a witness in the case, right? That's going to give perhaps the wrong impression. And so we have sheriffs are independent from the police, and their task is security at the courthouse. Now, usually in BC, we're reasonably safe, right? There are in criminal cases there would be a sheriff in every courtroom that's in session, right? And in some family and civil cases, there are also sheriffs available where there's a high security concern, like right now at the Victoria Courthouse, um there's a uh trial going on involving alleged gang activity and informant and uh you know this kind of thing. And so, for example, they've sealed off all but the main entrance, and they've got sheriffs there with a metal detector scanning everyone coming in and out so that nobody's bringing a gun or knife or hammer in, hopefully. Um usually it's not that, uh, but uh where necessary the sheriffs will do that sort of protection as well for the whole courthouse. So at this woman's trial, and she had a trial, the the primary issue uh was whether her mental state uh and she had uh alleged that she was not criminally responsible as a result of a mental disorder. Now, in Canada, that's a fairly high bar, right? You you need to establish uh, you know, essentially that you were had a disease of the mind, like a mental disorder, and they rendered you incapable of appreciating the natures of your actions or knowing that it was wrong. It's a very high threshold, right? Um and while there was some evidence that this person had, woman, maybe as evidenced by the uh knife and hammer attack in the courtroom, some mental health problems, including uh depression, anxiety, and what was described as a mild alcohol use disorder. Remembering she also drank to build up courage before coming in to commit this attack. Uh ultimately at the trial, the judge concluded no, she wasn't N CRMD. They accepted the doctor's opinion, it just wasn't it wasn't there, right? Uh and by the way, you you don't get there if you just get yourself really drunk, right? That's not going to get you to N CRMD. Anyways, she was convicted of the attempted murder and sentenced to uh a total of twelve years. Uh her counsel had suggested that the sentence should have been lower, uh six years or so, arguing that uh the alcohol use and mental illnesses which she did have, although not to the height of NCRMD, should have been mitigating. And there is some authority for that. And the idea there is that, you know, let's say somebody has a serious mental illness that contributed to what they did, but it didn't get to that high threshold of NCRMD, right? You can have a middle ground where you're still capable of being criminally responsible for what you've done, but let's say you had a mental illness which contributed to the offense or why the person committed the offense. And the way courts have looked at that, at least some courts in the past, is that that can, even if it's not NCRMD, can amount to what's referred to as a mitigating factor on sentencing, right? Um and so the argument here on the appeal was that the trial judge, uh having rejected the NCRMD, but did accept the you know the evidence from the uh the doctor who testified uh there, every everyone seemed to accept it, uh, that this woman did have these various mental uh conditions, uh, which uh you know maybe that helps explain why she got into this 20-year feud, which apparently was two ways, right? Both of these people were engaged in that conduct.
Adam Stirling:Yeah.
Michael Mulligan:Um and so the argument was, well, hey, my the moral culpability should have been lower, and the sentencing judge um, you know, should have reduced the sentence to take those things more into account, uh and so should have given a sentence of less than uh twelve years. And the Court of Appeal in dealing with that fact pattern agreed with all of those things. Yes, that you know, you can have a circumstance where there's reduced moral culpability as a result of a mental disorder, right? Even if it's not in CRMD. But they they pointed out, for example, in this case, right, some of those things I mentioned at the outset. Like this woman had clearly planned this attack in advance to the point of packing a suitcase and putting on the red clothing to cover up bloodstains and you know, drinking to get her courage up and arming herself and ask perhaps asking for the in-person hearing altogether, right? Back in twenty twenty-one, that would many of these things would have been you know online, right? Yeah. So she wanted this in-person hearing, maybe part of this plan.
Adam Stirling:Yeah.
Michael Mulligan:And so the Court of Appeal, this is another important thing to know on the sentence appeals, you know, the Court of Appeal will lay out those kind of principles and so on. Uh, but there's a high degree of difference in the Court of Appeal to decisions that trial judges have made. And so the Court of Appeal here pointed out that, you know, while a judge could have concluded on this evidence about the depression and so on, uh, that those things could have reduced the moral culpability of this woman. The judge wasn't required to do that. And the idea there is that the trial judge is going to be in the best position to make some of those kind of factual findings and judgments, right? They've heard from directly the expert, you know, they've heard the evidence at the trial, exactly what went on there. And so the the Court of Appeal won't usually get in and sort of tinker, even if the judge could have come to some different decision, and even if the Court of Appeal judges might say, well, I might have come to a different decision if I were the trial judge, that's not going to do it, right? You'd have to show that, look, there was just some error, for example, the judge made. Like, for example, had the sentencing judge said, you know, I cannot take these things into account when deciding whether uh there's reduced moral culpability, that would have been an example of, well, that's just incorrect. You you could, right? But if that could doesn't mean you must. Uh, and so on that basis, the uh Court of Appeal has uh, while granting leave to appeal, dismissed the sentence appeal. Um, and this woman will have to serve her uh twelve-year uh sentence. Interestingly, she's somebody who had previously no criminal record. She was fifty-three years of age when she committed the attack. Uh, she had an engineering degree and a diploma in international trade, so obviously a bright person, but became just completely obsessed with this other individual she met online. And then the wrong button. See, that's just the sort of thing that starts an intense online feud right there. No, just kidding. This is the uh you know clearly uh Claire. You know, even though she's somebody with no record and all of this and there were some mental health issues, ultimately the Court of Appeal found there was no mistake made by the trial judge, and so the uh 12-year sentence has been upheld. Uh and once again, thank you to all the sheriffs that are keeping those of us that are at the courthouse a lot safe, uh, but for their intervention in this case, this would probably not have been an attempted murder case. So that's the latest note of the Court of Appeal.
Adam Stirling:Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defense Lawyers. Legally speaking, we'll continue right after this. Legally speaking, with C Fax 1070 with Michael Mulligan and Mulligan Defense Lawyers. Michael, up next on the agenda says Consumer Protection BC decided Amazon, quote, didn't deliver to the customer when allegedly leaving a package with an unknown person at the delivery address. What happened?
Michael Mulligan:Well, I I must say this is, I think, pretty important to know about because if you don't know about it, you're not going to be able to make use of it. Uh and, you know, we've got uh Black Friday Christmas coming up, and so this is a decision dealing with the Consumer Protection Act and and a claim against uh Amazon. And the fact pattern involves a person who ordered uh some merchandise from Amazon online described as a portable dual display and portable digital storage unit, whatever that might be, for eight five hundred and eighty-two dollars and seventy-five cents. It sounds a bit like a toaster blender, but anyways, maybe it was one item, maybe it was two, but nonetheless that's what it uh was priced at. So he paid for it. Um and uh the uh thing or things, uh, from his perspective never showed up. Uh and so he started with uh you know contacting Amazon. Hey, where's my stuff? Um and Amazon uh responded by looking at the information they had in their system about the delivery. Um and the Amazon delivery practice, many people be familiar with this, they're not always asking for like if they show up, sometimes they'll just leave something on the porch, right? You then you may or may not wind up with a porch pirate. Or they may knock on the door, maybe it's higher value things, and hand it to somebody. Now the challenge here uh is that Amazon doesn't determine who they've handed it to. Uh and their system will track, apparently, uh like the GPS coordinates of the person doing the delivery. And so this fellow said, Look, I didn't get my stuff, uh, to which Amazon's response was, well, that's too bad, but you know, somebody showed up at the right address. We can tell that from the GPS, and they handed it to somebody uh somebody at to answer the door, effectively. Uh and this fellow said, Well look, I didn't get it. Uh and apparently he had multiple roommates, and none of them uh they all denied getting it. But of course, who knows what happened to the package. Maybe a roommate took it and took off with it, or maybe some friend of the roommate took the thing and was really enamored by the dual display portable unit. Who knows? But the man says, I didn't get it. Amazon tells him, sorry, we don't believe you. Uh and they affect the their reason for that appears to be that he had over the past three years or past year had three other instances where he said I didn't get delivery of whatever it was that he ordered from Amazon. So Amazon took the position, well, we think you're uh, you know, that's uh indicative that maybe you're doing something fraudulent and claiming that you didn't get these things. So the fellow data uh looked up, I guess, the Consumer Protection Act and ultimately made a complaint with them after Amazon said no, we're not uh refunding your money, and it looks like Amazon then canceled the person's account.
Adam Stirling:Wow.
Michael Mulligan:And so the consumer protection uh people, the director uh uh of that organization, conducted an investigation into what went on here. Uh and indeed in British Columbia, we do have a Consumer Protection Act. That may be news to some people, um, and it sets out a whole bunch of requirements and rights that attach to consumers uh dealing with uh what are described as um uh sort of uh a distant sales uh contract, like this kind of a thing, like an agreement for the supply of something remotely, like what you order on Amazon. Um and the distant sales contracts, that's what they're referred to, um, they have a number of things that must be in them and a bunch of requirements, like informational requirements for the consumer, this and that. One of the provisions in there, and for those keeping track at home, it's under section 491c of the uh that act, uh it says this. Uh, and it deals with when a person can cancel a contract. If at any time before the goods or services are delivered, if the goods or services to be delivered under the contract are not delivered to the consumer, to the consumer, that's important, within 30 days of the supply date, right? That would be sort of the date they say you're gonna get the stuff, right?
Adam Stirling:Okay, yeah.
Michael Mulligan:Now, so when you say, look, I never got the stuff, right? That's certainly gonna be within 30, that's gonna, you you know, didn't get it within 30 days, you never got it, right? That's the claim, right? I never got the stuff. Um, and so what the uh what had to be sorted out in this decision, uh consumer protection decision, was to sort out what the term uh in that legislation means when it refers to delivery uh to the consumer, right? What does that mean?
Adam Stirling:Yeah.
Michael Mulligan:Uh is it enough to have delivery when it's like dropped on the porch? Does that do it? Yeah uh uh is it uh delivery to the consumer when you leave it with an unknown person at the home? They don't know if it's a roommate, friend, somebody visiting, you know, cleaning lady, who who knows? They've left it with someone.
Adam Stirling:Yeah.
Michael Mulligan:And so the uh consumer protection people pointed out that look, uh, you know, there's uh sort of a modern principle of statutory interpretation. You're supposed to be looking at like, well, what's the legislative intent? You know, what's the plain reading of the section? Uh and then there's also a concept there dealing with consumer legislation like this, that terms like deliver or delivery to the customer are to be interpreted in a fashion which is viewed as like generous to the consumer, not in a kind of flinty way. Uh and so the interpretation applied here was that that doesn't do it. Uh just leaving it with an unknown person doesn't do it. And Amazon argued in what was described as long, lengthy submissions, that they ought not to be uh required to produce photographic proof of delivery or video proof of delivery, um, saying that that would interfere with like privacy if they're like handing the person, you know, somebody the dual display portable unit at the door, and then they pull out a camera to take a picture of you or something, they say, well, that might be uh you know invasion of privacy issue, right? So they're saying we shouldn't be required to do it. And they agreed with that proposition. No, that's not a requirement. You need not necessarily take a picture or a video. But when you have somebody saying, I didn't get it, uh, they're going to have the obligation, the onus to establish that they did deliver it to the consumer. Um and if all you can say is uh well, they showed up at the rate GPS coordinates and somebody there got it, um that's not likely to do it in terms of satisfying um their burden to show that they delivered the thing to the consumer. And the way this legislation works is if they breach, for example, that, like they don't get the thing to you in 30 days of the delivery date, it authorizes the uh consumer to cancel the contract. And there's uh access to how that may be done. It's fairly generous, it can be like email, messages, various different ways somebody can do that. Um and where you do cancel the contract under the uh consumer uh protection legislation, it mandates that the uh supplier refund all of your money. Uh and so and they have to do that within 14 days. And so that's what the person was asking for here. Look, I want a refund of the uh $500 and something dollars I paid for this stuff. Uh, and he wound up getting exactly that. Uh and so not only was he ordered to uh uh the Amazon ordered to refund the five hundred and some odd dollars that he paid for these things in accordance with the legislation, uh, but they also awarded him his legal costs for bringing this uh application uh successfully, uh which amounted to something in excess, it was nine thousand three hundred and sixty-nine dollars. And then further to that, uh applied a ten thousand dollar penalty to Amazon uh for what they had done in this case. Now, the other another interesting thing about all of this is Amazon tried pointing to some general contract provisions, you know, those things that you must click on to do anything in life, right? Sort of forty-five pages of text that says everything's your fault.
Adam Stirling:Yeah.
Michael Mulligan:Uh and they pointed out that no, that doesn't do it. Uh, that you can't they what the current contract does is, you know, this long terms and conditions, they would they try to contractually allocate all risk uh for things not getting delivered to the consumer. And they pointed out that no, you can't just override uh the Consumer Protection Act by saying the opposite uh in your long terms of service. Uh and so that doesn't do it either. Um it's not enough to just have a long thing that says, look, everything's your fault, you take all responsibility for every package going missing, and if somebody porch pirate takes it or somebody hit your home some visitor at your home runs off of it, your roommate's best friend or something, right? Uh that doesn't override the consumer protection legislation. They did point out that the legislation it does contemplate there could be some express agreement in uh for delivery in some other way, and that may be what Amazon needs to implement, right? Like if you said, look, uh every time something's sent over it's worth more than fifty bucks or something, you might have a system where you could come and say, Look, is it okay to leave this with any random stranger that shows up at the door to pick it up, right? And if somebody said, Yeah, I'm fine with anyone can get it, um, that's likely to beat the requirements here. Or Amazon could do other things. You could have a circumstance where they say, look, if it's worth more than $500 or some threshold, we're going to ask for uh, you know, what's your name and signature or something. Sometimes you'll get that with a courier. You know, if you get a something delivered that's more expensive, sometimes they'll ask, you know, what's your name? And please sign here. Uh and you know, you could have you could get to a point where it would be possible for Amazon or another uh seller to satisfy uh the uh to satisfactorily prove that they did in fact deliver it to the consumer, right? Uh but it's probably not gonna do it, and certainly didn't do it in this case, to say we left it with someone or we left it on the porch. And so I think it's an important decision, important for people to know about, because if you don't know about some of this stuff, you're gonna be it's gonna be absolutely impossible for you to uh avail yourself of any of it. So if you find out uh if the you get hit by porch pirates uh or if your roommate's best friend runs off with your uh portable dual screen display uh and uh Amazon uh won't fix the problem after you try with them and ultimately cancel the contract under this legislation. Um you need to know you have uh an avenue for uh redress. Uh and when you engage that, that entire process, consumer protection, uh also involves things like it was apparent in this case, they investigated it, that people contact Amazon. Uh there's something there for you. So you don't need to uh accept that Amazon's the final arbiter, and uh that's the latest on Amazon uh and the uh Consumer Protection Act.
Adam Stirling:Michael Mulligan with Legally Speaking during the second half of our second hour every Thursday. Michael, thank you so much. Pleasure as always. Thanks so much. Always great to be here. All right. Quick break back after this.