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?
Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan is live on CFAX 1070 every Thursday at 12:30 p.m. It’s also available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Legally Speaking May 7 2026
Adam Stirling [00:00:00] It’s time for our regular segment joined as always by Barrister and Solicitor with Mulligan Defence Lawyers. It’s Legally Speaking on CFAX 1070 with Michael Mulligan afternoon. Michael. How are we doing?
Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:10] Hey, good afternoon. I’m doing great. Always, it’s good to be here.
Adam Stirling [00:00:12] There’s some interesting topics on our agenda today I’m reading the first is his responsibility for a catastrophic injury at a martial arts tournament. It says a claim against the BC Athletics Commissioner in the province of BC and a criminal code prohibition on “prize fights”. How does all of that work?
Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:30] Well, it’s really interesting, and I must say, as many of these cases we talk about have at their origin some form of human tragedy, and this is no exception, the background of this was back in 2023 there was a mixed martial arts tournament being held, and it happened to be held at some space owned by SFU, which is how they are involved in this litigation. And at this Mixed Martial Arts Tournament, one of the participants was a then 26-year-old UBC student who had recently graduated in chemistry, with a bright future. He was involved in what was described as a kickboxing match and very sadly he was injured in one of, it sounds like three bouts of kickboxing and 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 try out kickboxing.
Adam Stirling [00:01:29] wow.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:01:30] And so a completely devastating, life-changing event for him went from a future chemist to somebody who was in a vegetative state sort of staring off into space. So just completely devastating for him. And so from that came a claim against various people involved with all of this to try sort of who might be or is anyone else responsible for the injuries that he suffered. And in the list of people that were sued, they included Simon Fraser University, as the owner of the space, right?
Adam Stirling [00:02:11] mm hmm.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:02:11] And Simon Fraser university decided to do what’s called third partying other people, that’s 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 one of the interesting legal issues here is that Simon Fraser University, who was being sued on the basis that they were the owner of the space, I guess, pointed the finger at the provincial government in the form of the Athletics Commissioner. Now you might even wonder, do we have an Athletics Commissioner? What on earth do they do?
Adam Stirling [00:02:48] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:02:49] One of the things that the Athletics Commissioner, which is a provincial official, is required to do. 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 kick boxing matches, things of that sort. 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, including prize fights between people who are amateurs, where the sport has been designated by the Athletic Commissioner. And so the athletic commissioner has the authority to designate 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 and kickboxing is in that category. And so what Simon Fraser University argued effectively is, look, hey, this isn’t our fault, you know, for being the owners of the space. There’s, if we’re in any way responsible, really, it should be the athletics commissioner and in turn the province on the basis that they gave approval for this match to take place. And so if there’s liability, it’s not us, it is them. That’s the nature of a third-party notice. And so, 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. and the trial, judge rejected the provinces already was saying, no, this, yeah, this is allowed to go ahead on that basis.
Adam Stirling [00:04:43] hmm.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:04:43] On that claim not a final determination, but you can be sued by the athletics commissioner potentially for doing enough. 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 an interesting issue there is it goes back to some of the fundamentals of when you can sue somebody for negligence, like when you claim another person is responsible. And the foundation of civil claims for negligence need to start with the idea that the person that you’re trying to sue owes a duty of care to you to make sure you’re safe and 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, at least previous to no fault, but like for example when you’re driving your car, you used to have a duty of care at other people, not to be careless and crash into them.
Adam Stirling [00:05:42] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:05:42] That’s what 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 And when you’re dealing with like a novel claim for who’s responsible for whom like “hey The athletics commission is really responsible for allowing this kickboxing tournament to go” on that hasn’t really been decided before, and the common law kind of evolves over time right to sort of deal with new things that may not have arisen before.
Adam Stirling [00:06:12] mm hmm.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:06:13] 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, Otherwise the law would be kind of the static it could never change, right.
Adam Stirling [00:06:24] Yeah, yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:06:24] You know at one point how horseback riders would have be clearly had a liability ought to run into pedestrians. But then we got cars and so, you know, the law changed and progressed. And so when you’ve got this kind of a novel claim of duty of care, hey, the commissioner is responsible for this potentially, there’s a test for it. It’s called the Anne’s-Cooper analysis. The core of that test goes to the issue of, goes to this test of proximity, and the idea that like is that 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 ensure that somebody, you know, isn’t injured, for example. And one of the basic principles that arises there is simply because the government has created some statutory obligation to do something, like in this case the Athletics Commissioner has this like statutory authority to designate sports like kickboxing, and they can choose when they are also need to give specific permission for you to have like a kickboxing match?
Adam Stirling [00:07:32] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:07:32] 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 that 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; I mean if first of all it deals with that idea of proximity, in the idea that you know, there can be things which have some like remote connection to an event, but the law is not going to use that as a basis to make somebody responsible, legally, for something, you know like for example, I don’t know like a school not giving a detention to somebody who then goes out at the regular time and happens to do something careless causing an injury. It’s like did the school have something to do with a person being there. Yeah, I guess so, you know had they had a longer detention, maybe they couldn’t have gotten into trouble at 3:05. But that’s probably going to be just too remote, you just can’t sort of go back and look at the flapping butterfly wing and determine that that’s what caused the hurricane.
Adam Stirling [00:08:49] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:08:50] And so in previous cases, courts have found that the fact there’s a statutory duty to do something doesn’t make it proximate 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 the public good. Taking sort of everyone’s interests into consideration. And things like regulating combat sporting events, there’s a good reason why we might have those public policies. You don’t have 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 them over them may well make sense from a broad public perspective, right?
Adam Stirling [00:09:36] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:09:36] 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. It’s not close enough, approximate enough. And so the Court of Appeal looked at this appeal. They said, well, yes, it’s true that there can be new and novel 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 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 approved kickboxing as one these kind of prize-fighting things that can go on and indeed, and they said no to this particular event. It’s true that this terrible tragedy wouldn’t have fallen 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 him, this person, as opposed to just 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 point the finger at the Athletics Commissioner to 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 and that will allow the case to go on with the other people that are being sued, you know who organized it. There are various other claims being made and we’ll have to wait and see what happens in this terrible tragic case, but one of the people involved will not be the Athletics Commissioner, even though they’re the ones who ultimately could have refused to allow kickboxing to be going on. And so that’s the latest from the BC Court of Appeal on proximity and civil liability for a government agency like that one.
Adam Stirling [00:11:48] Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally Speaking, will continue right after this.
[00:11:53] COMMERCIAL.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:11:53] All right, we’re back on the air here at CFAX 1070. Michael Mulligen with Mulligan Defence Lawyer. Coming up after the break, we are going to be speaking with somebody from down at the legislature whose question period question we played earlier on in the program. Exercising right of reply will be Amelia Boultbee, Independent MLA for Penticton-Summerland, coming up. Meanwhile, back to our conversation with Michael. Michael, where were we on the main issues of the day that we’re covering?
Michael T. Mulligan [00:12:16] So the next case I thought would be of some interest is a BC Supreme Court decision dealing with a person trying to appeal their ticket. And in this case, the particular ticket was for speeding and driving without due care under the Motor Vehicle Act, so that was the ticket, nothing out of the ordinary there.
Adam Stirling [00:12:34] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:12:34] But What happened here is that the person who got the ticket 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 Offence Act, the way it works is that you’ll have a period of time, in this case it was 30 days, in order to dispute the ticket. And if you don’t dispute the tickets within 30 days, you’re deemed to have pled guilty to it. So that’s an important takeaway for people. If you’re on a ticket and you just wait too long, you’re deemed to have plead guilty.
Adam Stirling [00:13:09] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:13:09] And if you get to that point and you’re trying to, like, get more time to appeal it, like hey, I’m here at day 31, there’s a bunch of things that a judicial justice would need to be persuaded of to let you appeal it. And they’ve kind of streamlined that because now they have, like forms people can fill out for why it is they’re asking for more time. There’s a whole list of things that 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. That there’s no prejudice caused by the delay and there’s in that there’s an arguable defence like they’re bunch of things they must be satisfied of. Here, the woman who got the ticket 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. And indicated that she searched, like on one date, couldn’t find it tried a couple of days later, still couldn’t find it. Then the next day tried to, that 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.
Adam Stirling [00:14:18] hmmm.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:14:18] 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 in her kitchen and her evidence was that her cat wound up playing for it and lost her damage at the ticket so Basically, it was the cat ate my ticket.
Adam Stirling [00:14:38] Okay, that is… Okay, that is what that says. I looked at that and went; I’m not saying that in case it’s wrong. I’ll let Michael say it. So that does say the cat ate my ticket. Okay.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:14:46] 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.
Adam Stirling [00:14:56] Okay.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:14:56] And then she says, well, I just waited. I thought I’d get something in the mail, and she didn’t and then, so she came in a few weeks later and fill out this form saying, I want more time, this cat took it. And so The justice who got this thing had to look at all this and the justice, 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 also as part of this, you need to demonstrate that you have an arguable defence. Now, that’s not the case if you do it within 30 days, if you knew 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 planned to do it. You also have to show that you have an arguable defence. 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 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 up 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, but it looks like just few sentences, like denied no arguable defence and not satisfied by 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 by 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 you know the cat eating it and not Doing anything else after this online system wasn’t working out. And so the judge, first of all, analyzing all this, found that judicial justice had not provided sufficient reasons with respect to the conclusion of no arguable defence. Because when you look at what she provided, there was an arguable defence in what she had specified there. And you just couldn’t tell, how did you come to the conclusions 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 charge. And so the judge reviewing this found that if that was the only issue here, they would not have been satisfied with that conclusion of denied no arguable defence. You can’t make anything of that. But the sections require all of the various things to be established. And on that issue of, you know, did the person through no fault of the defendant not have an opportunity to dispute the allegations or that, the judge found that the conclusion was not unreasonable and that the explanation that the cat intervened and stopped this from happening. Wasn’t, wasn’t a sufficient answer and even though it appeared in was not 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 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 when she tried these various times. Maybe there was a reason for that, but it wasn’t set out anywhere there.
Adam Stirling [00:18:27] hmm.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:18:27] And so, they found that even though the reasons from the justice who initially reviewed this were not sufficient to sort out that there was no possible defence to it, the conclusion that they were also not satisfied that she was unable to do this 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, that’s enough. And there are other things in here too that they didn’t get into, like I mentioned the arguable defence and they did not have an opportunity, no fault of your own, for example, but there are things listed there. Like for example no undue prejudice resulting from the extension. And so you could have undue prejudiced, let’s say a witness became unavailable or there’s some other reason why you could no longer prosecute the offence because you waited too long. And so at the end of the day, the reason of the cat eating or destroying the ticket wasn’t going to fly, was upheld on this judicial review of that 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, because much of this information is literally provided on the ticket.
Adam Stirling [00:19:46] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:19:47] And it is important to know that whether you look at it or not, just be aware there’s a time limit. And unlike with other things that are more serious, 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, it could be different. If you don’t do it within that period of time, you’re deemed to have pled guilty, and then you’re going to have an uphill battle trying to come up with satisfactory reasons for all the things that have to be established. So the short of it is, if you get a ticket, you want to dispute it, get on with it, telling them that your cat ate it, it’s not going to cut it. So that’s the latest for the BC Supreme Court when you can get more time to dispute your ticket.
Adam Stirling [00:20:26] Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally S, during the second half of our second hour every Thursday. Thank you so much, Michael. Pleasure, as always.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:20:33] Thanks so much. Always great to be here. All right.
Adam Stirling [00:20:35] We’ll take a quick break. The news is next.
Automatically Transcribed on May 19, 2026 – MULLIGAN DEFENCE LAWYERS