Suspended Vancouver lawyer ordered to pay neighbour $30K for time spent dealing with pseudo-legal lawsuit

Naomi Arbabi ordered to pay special costs to neighbour for ‘frivolous and vexatious’ claim. A suspended Vancouver lawyer who lost a “frivolous” lawsuit against her neighbour over a glass deck divider has been ordered to pay the woman nearly $30,000 in costs, likely ending a case that legal experts had described as highly unusual.
Naomi Arbabi had claimed trespass against her neighbour, Colleen McLelland. McLelland declined an interview, but her lawyer spoke to CBC News on Tuesday.
“She’s feeling both pleased and somewhat vindicated by the fact that she obtained a reasonable amount of compensation for being dragged through the proceedings she was dragged through,” said Greg Palm, managing partner at Hamilton Duncan Law Corporation.
One expert on pseudo-legal arguments described the case as “magical gibberish,” while another said it was “extraordinarily rare” to see such a claim from a practising lawyer. The judge who dismissed the case said it bore the hallmarks of claims made by OPCA [Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments] litigants” — legal theories favoured by fringe groups like Sovereign Citizens and Freemen on the Land.
Settlement offer for $14k
In her original claim filed in October, Arbabi accused McLelland of trespassing upon her by obstructing her mountain view when the strata of their Fairview condo building installed a 1.7-metre-high opaque glass privacy divider on McLelland’s rooftop deck.
A judge dismissed the case in January and ordered Arbabi to pay special costs — money “generally awarded as a punishment for conduct that the court determines to be reprehensible,” Palm said. The only issue left to sort out was the amount Arbabi needed to pay. Source: cbc.ca/news/