A Kickboxing Tragedy And The Cat Ate My Ticket

One decision can change a life, and another can quietly lock you into a guilty plea. We start with a heartbreaking civil claim tied to a mixed martial arts tournament and a kickboxing bout that leaves a 26-year-old UBC chemistry graduate in a permanent vegetative state. Because the event took place in space owned by Simon Fraser University, SFU ends up in the lawsuit and tries to shift responsibility to the province by pointing at the BC Athletics Commissioner, who approved kickboxing under the Criminal Code “prize fight” framework.

We dig into what that approval power really means, and why the BC Court of Appeal says it still does not create the kind of proximity needed for negligence. Using the Anns/Cooper analysis, we unpack duty of care, remoteness, and the core idea that a statutory decision-maker acting for the public good is not automatically on the hook for private damages when something goes wrong. It’s a clear look at the limits of government liability, even when a regulator could have said “no” and prevented the event from happening.

Then we switch gears to a BC Supreme Court ruling with everyday stakes: a speeding and driving-without-due-care ticket, a missed 30-day deadline under the Offence Act, repeated attempts on an online dispute portal, and the explanation that a cat damaged or “ate” the ticket. We walk through the extension-of-time test, what “arguable defence” requires, and why missing even one required factor can sink your application.

If you value practical legal takeaways and clear explanations of Canadian case law, subscribe, share the episode, and leave us a review. What part of these rulings do you think the courts got right or wrong?

Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed.

Transcript

Pride Fights And Real Consequences

Adam Stirling 0:26

quote unquote pride fight. How does all of that work?

Kickboxing Injury Sparks A Lawsuit

SFU Tries To Blame The Province

Duty Of Care And Proximity Explained

Court Of Appeal Rejects Commissioner Liability

Ticket Dispute Deadlines That Trap People

Online Portal Problems And Lost Ticket

Michael Mulligan 0:30

Well it's really interesting. And I must say as many of these uh cases we talk about uh uh have at their origin some form of human tragedy and this is no exception uh the background of this was back in 2023 there was a mixed martial arts tournament being uh held uh and it happened to be held in a uh some space owned by SFU which is how they they are involved in this litigation and at this mixed martial arts uh tournament uh one of the participants was a then 26-year-old UBC student uh who had uh recently graduated in chemistry uh with a bright future uh he was involved in what was described as a kickboxing match uh and very sadly he was uh injured in one of it sounds like three bouts of kickboxing uh and uh at the end of that the result was that he wound up in a permanent vegetative state something you might want to consider before you decide to go and uh try out kickboxing um and uh so a completely devastating life-changing uh uh event uh for him went from a uh you know future uh chemist uh to somebody who is in a vegetative state sort of staring off into space so just uh completely uh devastating for him and so from that uh came a uh claim uh against uh various people involved with all of this to try to sort out uh uh who might be uh or is anyone else uh responsible for uh the uh injuries uh that he suffered and and in the list of people that were sued they included Simon Fraser University I guess the owner of the space right um and Simon Fraser University decided to do what's called third partying other people to s that's but what the way that works is that if you're sued for something one of the responses you might have is it's not my fault, it's this person, right? Sort of pointing the finger at somebody else. And the one of the the interesting legal issue here is that Simon Fraser University who was being sued on the basis that they were the you know owner of the space I guess uh was uh pointed the finger at uh the provincial government uh in the form of the athletics commissioner. Now you might even wonder do we have an athletics commissioner? What on earth do they do? Well one of the things that the athletics commissioner which is a provincial uh official uh is required to do uh and it arises this obligation arises because of how the criminal code operates with respect to things referred to as prize fights so things like you know boxing matches or you know MMA tournaments or kickboxing matches things of that sort um the starting point when you look at the criminal code is that you said it says you're not allowed to have these prize fights but there's some exceptions to that uh including prize fights between people who are amateurs uh where the sport has been designated by the athletic commissioner and so the athletic commissioner has the authority to designate uh particular sports or activities right boxing kickboxing MMA whatever it might be and then they also have the authority if they wish to set out which of those sort of events they need to provide specific permission for there to be a match held uh and kickboxing is in that category uh and so what Simon Fraser University argued effectively is look hey this isn't uh our fault uh you know for being the owners of the space um there's uh if we're in any way responsible really it should be the athletics commissioner and in in turn the province on the basis that they gave approval for this match to take place uh and so if there's liability it's not us it's them that's the nature of a third party notice and so uh the province applied to try to stop that to say we don't want to be blamed for this and so they applied to what they called strike out the third party notice like they applied to the judge the trial judge saying hey you should not allow us to be blamed as the third party um and the trial judge rejected the province's argument saying no this uh this is allowed to go ahead on that basis uh that claim not a final determination but you can be sued the athletics commissioner potentially for doing this and that led to the province appealing that decision the decision about whether they could potentially be responsible to the Court of Appeal and the reason it's uh an interesting issue there is it goes back to sort of some of the fundamentals of like when you can sue somebody for negligence like when you can claim that another person is responsible. And the foundation of claims civil claims for negligence need to start with the idea that the person that you're trying to sue uh owes a like duty of care to you to make sure you're safe they don't you know they're not careless and don't injure you. And so some there are some duties of care like that that are well established. Like for example I've no fault but like for example when you're driving your car you used to have a duty of care to other people not to like be careless and crash into them. Right? That's most people say well that kind of makes sense right but this that legal concept of duty of care isn't unlimited. And there's a um and when you're dealing with like a a novel claim for who's responsible for whom like hey the Athletics Commissioner's really responsible for allowing this kickboxing tournament to go on. That hasn't really been decided before right and the the common law kind of evolves over time right to sort of deal with new things that may not have uh arisen before and so the original trial judge pointed out that it's not appropriate to just say because that hasn't been found before that it could never succeed here right otherwise the law would be kind of the static it could never change right you know at one point how horseback riders would have clearly had a liability not to run into pedestrians but then we got cars and so you know the law changed and uh progressed. And so when you've got this kind of a novel claim of duty of care like hey this commissioner's responsible for this potentially there's a test for it. It's called the Anne's Cooper analysis and the core of that test uh goes to the issue of goes to this test this test of proximity and the idea that like is that uh the sort of person you're saying is responsible are they kind of proximate enough to what went on to create this duty of care where they have a responsibility to not be careless and to uh uh ensure that somebody uh you know isn't injured for example uh and one of the basic principles that arises there is is simply because the uh government has has created some statutory obligation to do something like in this case the Athletics Commissioner has this like statutory authority to designate uh sports like kickboxing right and they uh can choose when they are also need to give specific permission for you to have like a kickboxing match right yeah one of the principles there the Court of Appeal pointed out is that because simply because there is that kind of a statutory scheme and there's some obligation to make those kinds of decisions that statutory obligation doesn't necessarily mean uh that uh there is also the kind of proximity necessary to make you responsible and liable for like negligence when somebody gets hurt. And part of the reason for that um I mean it first of all it it deals with the that idea of proximity like in the idea that you know there can be things which are have some like remote connection to an event uh but the law's not going to use that as a basis to make somebody um uh responsible legally for something you know like for example uh I don't know like a school not giving a detention to somebody who then goes out uh at the regular time and happens to do something careless causing an injury it's like did the school have something to do with the person being there? Yeah I guess so you know had they had a longer detention maybe they couldn't have gotten into trouble at 305 but that's probably going to be just too remote is sort of like you you just can't uh sort of go back and uh look at the flapping butterfly wing and determine that that's what caused the hurricane, right? Yeah. And so the in previous cases courts have found that the fact there's a statutory duty to do something doesn't isn't doesn't make it approximate enough that you can have a civil liability and a responsibility for that individual. And part of the idea there is that when government bodies like the Athletics Commissioner are making a decision, they're making a decision based on like the public good, taking sort of everyone's interests into consideration. And things like regulating uh combat sporting events, right, there's a good pup reason why we might have those public policies. You don't have like unregulated events going on in the basements of places where there's all kinds of you know danger and so regulating them and having some control of them over them may well make sense from a broad public perspective, right? But the fact that you have to make those public decisions doesn't mean that you've also generated a responsibility to make sure that all the people that are doing those things are safe. Right? That's it's not close enough, approximate enough. And so the Court of Appeal looked at this appeal. They said well yes you know it's true that you know there can be new and novel uh claims and we shouldn't just shut those down and make the law static. But the Court of Appeal looked at those broad principles about how a statutory duty doesn't translate into proximity for civil responsibility and found that given all of that there was uh no reasonable basis upon which the Athletics commissioner could be responsible for the devastating injury suffered by the participant in the kickboxing tournament even though it was indeed the Athletic Commissioner if they hadn't uh you know approved kickboxing as one of these kind of prize fighting things that can go on and indeed had they said no to this particular event, it's true that this tribal tragedy wouldn't have befallen the 26-year-old chemistry graduate. That's all true. But they found that look there's just no realistic possibility that there could be that kind of proximity that would generate the civil responsibility to this him, this person, as opposed to just those making those big public decisions about things like should we allow kickboxing at all or should this particular kickboxing tournament be allowed. And so the result of that is that Simon Fraser University was told by the Court of Appeal no, you can't just you can't point the finger at the athletics commissioner uh to uh you know share the blame for what happened here indeed if there's any blame for SFU at all. And so it's an important decision because it deals with those big principles uh and uh that will allow the case to go on with the other people that are uh being sued, you know, the people who are organized it, there are various other claims being made uh and we'll have to wait and see uh what happens uh in this uh terrible uh tragic case but uh one of the people involved will not be uh the athletics commissioner even though they're the ones who uh ultimately could have refused to allow kickboxing to be going on. And so that's the latest from the BC Court of Appeal on uh proximity and civil liability for uh uh a uh government agency like that's the coming up conversation with Michael Michael where were we on the main issues of the day that we're covering so the the next case uh I I thought would be of some interest is a BC Supreme Court decision uh dealing with uh a person trying to appeal their ticket uh and in this case the particular ticket was for speeding and driving without due care under the uh Motor Vehicle Act so that was the ticket nothing uh out of the ordinary there uh but what happened here is that the uh person uh who got the ticket uh uh tried to appeal it using an online portal that the government has created and the way this just by way of background when you get a ticket under the Offense Act uh the way it works is that you'll have a period of time in this case it was thirty days uh in order to dispute the ticket and if you don't dispute the ticket within thirty days you're deemed to have pled guilty to it. So that's an important takeaway for people. If you get a ticket and you just wait too long, you're deemed to have pled guilty. And if you get to that point and you're trying to like get more time to appeal it, like hey I to hear a day thirty one, there's a bunch of things that a a judicial justice would need to be persuaded of to let you appeal it. And it's they've kind of streamlined that because now they have like forms people can fill out uh for why it is they're asking for more time. But there's a whole list of things they have to be satisfied A through E. And they include things like through no fault of the person they didn't have an opportunity to dispute the ticket, that they had a genuine intention to do it before the time ran out, uh that there's no prejudice caused by the delay, that it's in in that there's an arguable defense. Like there are a bunch of things they must be satisfied of. Here, the woman who got the ticket uh provided information that she had tried on several occasions to dispute the ticket when it was still within the 30 days including going to this online dispute portal this government website uh and indicated that she searched on like on one date couldn't find it tried a couple of days later still couldn't find it uh then the next day tried the that uh online portal apparently has some way to take a photograph of your ticket and upload it to see if that can be found that way that didn't work uh she then made three more attempts a couple of days after that and no success then she left the ticket it sounds like on her kitchen uh uh in her kitchen uh and uh her evidence was uh that uh her cat wound up playing for it and lost or damaged the ticket so basically it was the cat ate my ticket uh okay that is what that says I looked at that and I went I'm gonna say that in case it's wrong I'll let Michael say it.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

So that does say the cat ate my ticket. Okay.

Extension Test And Arguable Defence

Why The Late Dispute Still Fails

Practical Takeaways And Wrap Up

Michael Mulligan 14:46

Yeah I mean in other words it was like after playing with the ticket it was damaged or lost so it amounts to the cat ate the ticket or cat hid the ticket. So cat did it. Okay. And then she says well I just waited I thought I'd get something in the mail and she didn't uh and then so she came in a few weeks later and filled out this form saying I want more time because cat took it. And so the uh justice who got this thing had to look at all this uh and the justice uh yeah the way it works is you would like fill out this form explaining like what were you doing and why didn't this happen and and and also as part of this you need to demonstrate that you have an arguable defense. Now that's not the case if you do it within 30 days if you do it within time you just want to plead not guilty great we'll have a trial you know who knows what might happen. But if you're outside of that time you've got to show that no fault of your own you couldn't get it filed. You plan to do it you also have to show that you have an arguable defense. And so she filled out a whole other page about sort of why she thought she agreed that she was speeding but disagreed that she was driving without due consideration for others and she brought an explanation that uh no other vehicles had to break or swerve there's nothing else happening here. She had a whole explanation for it. And the judicial justice responded after looking at all this the cat ate my ticket and that's why I couldn't do it and this explanation and came out with some very thin reasons, I guess that's the way you might describe them in a charitable way saying that a couple of like just a few it looks like just a few sentences like denied no arguable defense and not satisfied by the of that first criteria either. And so this was an appeal to the BC Supreme Court of that judicial justice's decision saying hey you know I should have had my chance to have my day in court here. And so the judge who was analyzing this review of the decision had to look at first of all was this enough in terms of the reasons provided in terms of the you know the cat eating it and and not uh doing anything else after this online system wasn't working out. And so the judge first of all analyzing all this found that the judicial justice had not provided sufficient reasons with respect to the conclusion of no arguable defense because when you looked at what she provided there was an arguable defense in what she'd specified there. And you just couldn't tell how did you come to the conclusion that my explanation that nobody had to break or swerve or do anything and that I was driving in a reasonable fashion albeit speeding didn't make out that uh that charge. And so the uh judge reviewing this found that uh if that was the only issue here it they would not have been satisfied that that re that conclusion of denied no arguable defense you can't make anything of that, right? But the sections require all of the various things to be uh established. Uh and on that uh that issue of you know did the person uh through no fault of the defendant not have an opportunity to dispute the allegations or the uh that uh the uh judge found that the conclusion was not unreasonable uh and that the explanation that the cat intervened and stopped this from happening wasn't satisf wasn't a sufficient answer because even though it appeared and was not uh contested that she had made these various efforts to use this online portal various days and uploading things and whatnot, there was no explanation either uh why she thought she would get something in the mail from the police. There's just no basis for that. And there was also no explanation is why didn't she just go and go down to the motor vehicle branch which she tried these various times. Maybe there was a reason for that, but it wasn't set out anywhere there. And so the uh found that even though the reasons from the uh justice who initially reviewed this were not sufficient to sort out that there was no uh possible defense to it, uh the conclusion that uh they were also not satisfied uh that she was unable to do this uh thing, unable to through no fault of her own didn't have an opportunity to dispute it, that was sufficient. And because all the things have to be established, if even one of them is adequately described and even if one of these things is missing, uh that's enough. And there are other things in here too that didn't they didn't get into like I mentioned the arguable defense and they did not have an opportunity no fault of your own, for example, but there are other things listed there. Like for example no undue prejudice resulting from the extension. And so you could have undue prejudice let's say a witness became unavailable or there's some other reason why you could no longer prosecute the offense because you waited too long. And so the at the end of the day the the uh reason of uh the cat eating or destroying the ticket uh wasn't going to fly uh was upheld on this judicial review of that uh decision and so really I think here for people there are a couple of takeaways first of all when you get a ticket carefully read the thing uh because much of this information is literally provided on the ticket yeah and it is important to know that whether you look at it or not just be aware there's a time limit and unlike uh with other things that are more serious um if you don't respond to it and file your notice to contest the thing within the time period specified there or usually 30 days but look at it could be different right uh if you don't do within that period of time you're deemed to have pled guilty and then you're gonna have an uphill battle uh trying to uh come up with uh satisfactory reasons for all the things that have to be established so the short of it is if you get a ticket and you want to dispute it, get on with it, uh telling them that your cat aid it's not gonna not gonna cut it. So that's the latest for the BC Supreme Court and when you can get more time to dispute your ticket.

Adam Stirling 20:26

Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defense Lawyers legally speaking during the second half of our second hour every Thursday. Thank you so much Michael pleasure as always. Thanks so much. Always great to be here. All right we'll take a quick break the news next