Star Players Stay Home & Police Dog Chase to Doggy Daycare

 

Messi-sized hype, premium ticket prices, then a last-minute announcement that the stars aren’t coming. We walk through the Vancouver Whitecaps class action that followed, including the consumer protection and contract claims that were pleaded and the court process that protects thousands of ticket buyers who never appear in court. If you’ve ever wondered how a class action settlement gets approved in British Columbia, we translate the legal test of “fair and reasonable” into plain language, including what notice looks like, what it means to opt out, and why a handful of objections can still trigger careful judicial scrutiny.

Then we get to the part that surprised many people: the settlement pays $475,000, but not to the class members. The money goes as charitable donations to BC sports organizations, with the judge accepting that distributing a few dollars per person could cost more than it’s worth once administration and verification are added. We also talk about the real-world “make-good” measures offered to fans, the requirement for clearer ticket language that players are subject to change, and how courts review class counsel fees and a representative plaintiff’s honorarium.

From there, the legal grab bag keeps going. We unpack a Vancouver e-scooter case that starts with sidewalk and helmet issues, turns into a pursuit and the abandonment of bags at a muddy construction site, and ends with a police dog leading officers to a doggy daycare. Finally, we explain a major development under the Youth Criminal Justice Act: following a Supreme Court of Canada decision, the Crown must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that diminished moral blameworthiness is rebutted before a teen can receive an adult sentence, and courts must separate maturity from sentence-length objectives.

If you like sharp legal analysis tied to real BC headlines, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review. What part of these outcomes feels most fair or most unsettling to you?

 

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 April 2 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 CFAX1070 with Michael Mulligan. Afternoon, Michael, how we doing?

Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:11] Hey, good afternoon. I’m doing great. Always good to be here.

Adam Stirling [00:00:13] Some interesting items on the agenda this week. It says here, a class action settlement approved for soccer star players not showing up for a Vancouver Whitecaps game. What happened?

Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:24] Well, this was a game that was scheduled back in May of 2024. And it was a game scheduled to be in Vancouver. It was supposed to be the Whitecaps and then another team, the Inter Miami CF, was the other team, and the tickets were promoted, on the basis, in part, that there were some famous players that were going to come and play on behalf of Miami CF. They included Messi and a couple of other fellows whose last names, I will no doubt mispronounce as a result of my lack of soccer knowledge, but they were a big deal and lots of people interested in seeing them play. And they sold a bunch of tickets for a higher value than what they would usually sell tickets for and then moreover As I guess often is the case, there was lots of resale activity. And so I guess the prices went way up to get tickets to go see this game. And then ultimately shortly before the game was to be played The Miami CF team announced they weren’t bringing the three famous players. They weren’t going to fly them here to Vancouver to play and so you had all these disappointed fans who had bought tickets. There was a total of 50,657 people who had tickets and who eventually became class members in a class action against the Vancouver Whitecaps. And the basis for the claim was creative. It was framed under the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, the Competition Act, claims of unjust enrichment, claims that it violated the sale of goods act and that it was a breach of contract. That was how it was framed and so as Class actions go, the way it works is you have a person who’s a representative plaintiff. You’ve got a law firm who’s acting for them and off you go. We get the thing set certified and you can potentially settle the thing and in this case what happens is that like all class action cases that settle short of a trial, where it’s just the judge makes a decision, where you have a settlement reached, and in this case the settlement was reached by a process including a mediation process, and where you’ve got that, you then have to have a, First of all a process that provides notice to all of the class members or all of them as best you can and That’s supervised by the court. Here The court directed that there be email sent out to everyone for whom there were email addresses based on the ticket sale, so there are 21,292 emails went out on the 87 bounced back. So that’s pretty good.

Adam Stirling [00:03:06] Yeah.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:03:07] And then other things happened like they would run ads and news There would be things posted online, trying to make sure everyone’s aware of it. And then they, first of all, give people who would be affected by the settlement, like potential recipients of the settlement award, they have an opportunity to object to it or opt out. And those are different things. If you opt out, what that means is you’re then not part of the Settlement and you could go ahead and, you know, sue the Vancouver Whitecaps in the small claims court or something, I guess, if you wanted to, if don’t like the settlement. Or you can object to, say, I just don’t think that you should carry on, we shouldn’t accept this. Now of the 21,000-some-odd emails went out to these people who bought tickets. As I said, 11 opt out 12 objections. So it meant to meant 0.217% opted out and 0.237% objected. And then once that happens, you have to or the lawyers have to go before a judge to have the judge determine whether the settlement should be accepted because you wouldn’t want an outcome that might not be in the best interest of everyone involved. And so that requires a judge to determine whether the settlement is, this is the language, fair and reasonable and in the best interests of the class as a whole.

Adam Stirling [00:04:28] mm hmm.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:04:28] That’s the test to be applied. And when a judge is doing that, there’s a whole list of things the judge has to take into account, including things like how likely was this thing to succeed? Was it a surefire winner or kind of a, you never know what could happen. It’s just going to stick to the wall. Things like the evidence involved, terms of the settlement, recommendations of counsel, expenses involved, litigation went forward, a whole bunch of things the judge has to take into account. Now, here’s the interesting thing about this particular settlement. The particular Settlement was an agreement to have the Vancouver Whitecaps pay $475,000, but all in the form of donations to sports-related organizations. None of it paid to the actual people who had tickets. And so the proposal was that the donation be made to Kids Sports BC, that they provide the cost of children’s sport registration fees for families that can’t afford them. Donation to Canada Scores, Vancouver General Fund, After School Athletics, and the BGC South Coast BC Boys and Girls Club to provide funding for sports activities. And so the judge had to determine, look, is it in the best interest of the class members that these donations be made rather than trying to distribute the $475,000 to them? And considerations the judge had taken into account here included the fact that the action was very complicated. There were potentially a number, it was novel, there were a whole bunch of potential defences available, like for example, the Whitecaps indicated they had no control over whether those other players came or not. And then there would be issues including compensation that the ticket holders received already in the form of various things the judge pointed out, like for example, I guess to make up for the famous players not coming. The Whitecaps did things like that, and there were 48,000 people who actually came to the game anyways. They gave them free tickets to a future home season game, they gave them 50% off stadium food that day, free children’s meals for anyone under the age of 18. And they also made arrangements to change how they advertise things to make it clear, you know, players could change. And so then the other thing taken into account here is that the lawyers involved pointed out that look, If you took the $475,000 and you divide it up amongst the 50,000-some-odd people who had tickets, and then you account for things like the cost of distributing the money, like the administrative cost of doing e-transfers and verifying people’s identities, everyone’s going to get a couple of bucks.

Adam Stirling [00:07:18] Yeah.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:07:19] And so, it has to be, what is broadly in the interests of the class members? And so there is a fair bit of judicial discretion to be applied here. But ultimately, the judge concluded this was an appropriate settlement, the very small amount that each person would get if you divide that up and you take into a cost of dividing up that money would make little difference to all the people. You know, if you get five bucks in an e-transfer, you know, that’s not making, not moving the needle very much. And so the judge found that was, in all these circumstances, an appropriate way to resolve this. And then another interesting thing that had to be sorted out was there’s this concept of an honorarium to the person who’s the representative plaintiff, and then there’s the issue for the judge to decide whether the fees charged by the lawyers are appropriate. On the fee front for the lawyers, first of all, the judge would look at, like we’re hearing, how much time did they spend? How complex was this thing? What do they do, right?

Adam Stirling [00:08:19] Yeah.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:08:19] And then the lawyers doing that sort of work aren’t simply paid, here’s their hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours because, of course, with this kind of a thing, they took all of the risk involved in it. They could have run this thing and gotten nothing.

Adam Stirling [00:08:34] mm hmm.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:08:34] And so they usually, as in this case, will approve a rate which is higher than what they would ordinarily bill at, assuming they’re going to be paid, because in this kind of a thing, they may or may not get paid anything, depending how this speculative bit of litigation played out. And then the other thing to be sorted out is how much should you pay as an honorarium, quote-unquote, to the representative plaintiff? And what a representative plaintiffs winds up doing can vary quite a bit. Sometimes they can spend days in court testifying and going to examinations for discovery and doing all kinds of things. It could be a huge time commitment. Here it wasn’t that much, right, and in large part because the case eventually settled prior to having a trial, which was positive. And so, while it was requested that the representative plaintiff get $2,500 for the work that he’d done, the judge ultimately approved $1,500 for that person, because they’d done a bunch of work, but it wasn’t days and days of work. And so it got approved. And so I thought it was an interesting case both because it highlights how those things get sorted out and how there’s judicial oversight for that process to make sure that a settlement is an appropriate one. And it’s an interesting case because it’s a circumstance for the settlement didn’t involve, you know, a direct five dollars for everyone, it would instead, instead, dealt with it by way of these charitable donations to sports-related organizations in B.C. And nonetheless, the judge found in this kind of case, given what was going on, all those factors. That was ultimately in the broad interest of the class as a whole. And so we got the judicial thumbs up, and the various kids’ sports organizations are going to get their donations. And then there’s also an agreement to make sure that in bolder language on the ticket sales site, it made clear that players are subject to change, which I guess most people would sort of realize on their own, but that’s now going to be highlighted more clearly for the Vancouver Whitecaps ticket sales going forward. So that’s the latest on the Whitecaps and the settlement and approval for the star players not showing up for the game.

Adam Stirling [00:10:47] Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally Speaking will continue right after this.

[00:10:52] COMMERCIAL.

Adam Stirling [00:10:52] Back on the air here at CFAX 1070 joined as always by Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally Speaking as we look at the issues of the week. Up next Michael, it says here if you’re going to traffic drugs on an e-scooter, not advisable to be clear, wear a helmet and don’t ride on the sidewalk or into the mud. Why are we talking about these issues today?

Michael T. Mulligan [00:11:13] Well, this in fact happened. So this was a case out of Vancouver, and it was the case, the police observed a fellow who was on one of those e-scooters in downtown Vancouver. But He wasn’t complying with some of the rules surrounding those e-scooters, including the requirement to put a helmet on and don’t ride on the sidewalk. And so this fellow was riding helmetless on the sidewalk, and then in addition, some passing police noticed that he had a couple of bags, “perched precariously at his feet,” and they thought it was all of that amounted to a safety risk. And so the police decided to try to stop the scooter rider, starting by yelling at him outside the passenger window of the police vehicle, demanding loudly that the operators stop. But the operator didn’t stop, they in fact took off and wound up causing a pursuit between the police and a car and this fellow on the e-scooter. Eventually, the e-scooter veered into an open construction site, which was full of obstacles and mud pits and became mired in the mud, at which point the scooter operator abandoned the e scooter and the bags and ran off on foot. And so the case became ultimately a case of ID, whether they could prove that a person who was apprehended, 15 minutes later, was indeed the scooter rider, because in the bags, abandoned in the, mired in the mud scooter, were a bunch of drugs.

Adam Stirling [00:12:46] hmm.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:12:47] And so the case then involved both an assessment of his evidence, he testified that he wasn’t his scooter, he was just a hapless passerby. The person who was apprehended, and evidence from the police about how they came upon and decided to arrest the fellow who was ultimately charged with being a scooter rider drug owner. Now the fellow apparently ran off through the muddy construction site, went over a fence, and the police kind of lost sight of him. One of the police then climbed up some scaffolding to get a better vantage point of where the person might have been going, and then another police officer released and deployed the police service dog, Dak. So Dak takes off and Dak’s handler indicated that the way he took off, indicated that he found a fresh human scent. Now the interesting thing about that is that where the person was eventually located happened to be, hilariously, a doggy daycare business. And so off goes Dak running towards the” fresh human scent” towards the doggy daycare, and Dak then lays down beside a toque, and the operator of Dak indicates that that was some indication that the fresh human scent he was tracking was from the toque or connected to the toque somehow. Then the man emerges from, that’s arrested, emerges from a doggy-daycare kennel area, and trips falls down and is arrested. Now, when he’s arrested, he’s got a fanny pack on with some $3,900 in it, and then there’s all the drugs back in these bags by the e-scooter. So the issue was, is this the same guy? And it’s interesting that the fellow actually wound up testifying and saying, no, this wasn’t me at all. I just happened to be at the doggie daycare area, and his explanation for the pile cash in his fanny pack. Was that he says that he’d won that playing Keno lottery tickets and that’s how he went up at the cash and so why nothing to do with the e-scooter or what was there. Now the problem for the man included both the circumstantial evidence is there generally in this not well-populated doggie daycare area, but more incriminating than that in the bags and containing the drugs was a court document and undertaking with his name on it. That, he had a hard time explaining, he said, well, that must have been stolen. He said, “I didn’t know how it was there”. But none of that got too far with the judge in large part because the man, after wellbeing cross-examined, acknowledged that he had previous criminal record for convictions including dishonesty, including theft, using identity documents unlawfully, tending counterfeit money, and using forged documents, none of which are signs of somebody who likely to be trustworthy. And so despite the confounding factors of the police dog running towards the doggie daycare, the man not actually being found on the scooter, and his evidence about having had nothing to do with this, claiming that he just got the money from a lottery win rather than selling drugs, the judge hearing the case had none of that and was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he was in fact the owner of the drugs in the bags and found him guilty. The takeaway, I guess, is if you could be engaged in some illegal activity riding around on your e-scooter, you best put a helmet on and stay off the sidewalks or you could find yourself, like this guy, tracked down and arrested by the police because none of that is permitted. There are a few rules of the road, including those ones, if you want to ride your e-scooter.

Adam Stirling [00:16:47] And number three, it says, decision to sentence a 15- and 16-year-old as adults for murder overturned on appeal. How does the Youth Criminal Justice Act work, Michael?

Michael T. Mulligan [00:16:59] Well, it’s changed, not the act, but at least how it’s interpreted, and that was the reason for this appeal. As you indicated, this was the case of two young people, 15 and 16, who were convicted following a trial of murdering somebody. Now it’s described as a brutal crime in the sense of a few things about it. One was that there appeared to be no connection between these two teenagers and the person who was killed, who appeared to have been just stabbed for no apparent reason, right across from a police station. And so they were ultimately convicted. And then the issue for the judge became, at the original trial, are they to be sentenced as a youth, because they’re, you know, they’re 15 and 16 years old, or should they receive an adult sentence? And, in fact, how that’s to work, there’s language about that in the Youth Criminal Justice Act. And it says that a youth justice court shall order an adult sentence be imposed if it is satisfied, he uses that term satisfied, that A) the presumption of diminished moral where the mis- or culpability of the young person is rebutted and… A youth sentence imposed in accordance with the purpose and principles in the Youth Criminal Justice Act would not be sufficient length to hold the young person accountable. And it makes a big difference because if you get an adult sentence for murder, it’s life in prison, and under the Youth Criminals Justice Act, the maximum length is seven years, right, with a portion of that in custody and not.

Adam Stirling [00:18:39] hmm.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:18:39] Now, the approach that had been taken in B.C. Used that language of satisfied. And that’s how the trial judge in this case approached it in accordance with what prior court of appeal cases had talked about. And some of the factors that are to be taken into account were things like whether the person’s apparent level of maturity was and looking at things like their background and circumstances and so on. Looking at considerations like the judge here took to take into account things like, did they show like planning and so on or was it some offence of impulsiveness or bravado? Maybe some indication of level of sort of moral sophistication and development? Looking at things like the living situation or their degree of independence and it could have got sometimes blended together with like how serious is that offence and that’s what the judge had done here. And it’s easy to understand that I mean when you speak about some of these things sort of in the abstract, I think most people would realize that look when children do something wrong. They likely have a diminished level of moral culpability than an adult would, right? They’re just not as well developed. They’re not going to have the same level of culpability as an adult, but yet that becomes hard when you have a very serious crime, right?

Adam Stirling [00:20:06] Yeah.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:20:06] And so sometimes those things kind of get blended together, that need for a longer sentence and some of those kind of equivocal factors about the person’s development. And the Supreme Court of Canada, after that case was decided and before this appeal was in a case that came out just last year. Found that there has to be a relatively stringent approach taken to those provisions when deciding whether you should sentence a young person as an adult, and they found that it’s not enough for the judge to be satisfied or probably the person is more mature, that the Crown has to establish that, like guilt, beyond all reasonable doubt.  That it’s not appropriate to kind of blend together some of those things like how mature does this person seems along with kind of how serious is this crime, that it is important for a judge to deal with those two considerations separately, right? That level of maturity issue, and then separately would the sentence be long enough to achieve the required objectives if the person didn’t receive an adult sentence. And so, the Court of Appeal here on this appeal said, look, the judge did what they were supposed to do based on the laws that stood, but the Supreme Court of Canada, in that case from last year, has changed how that’s to be approached. And those things now have to be considered separately and to a higher standard than just satisfied. It’s got to be beyond a reasonable doubt. And so, because of that change, and in fact the Crown agreed here on this appeal, what the judge decided would not be supported by that new, more stringent test from the Supreme Court of Canada.

Adam Stirling [00:21:46] okay.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:21:46] And so as a result, even though the crime is a serious one, and even though there are some factors that might have indicated more maturity, you know, on the other hand there were factors like one of the kids had an abusive childhood, another one was subject to frequent racism and so on, and this seemed to be not some well-planned out thing with some completely stupid and deadly activity, not an indication necessarily of extreme sophistication. And the result of all that is that the Court of Appeal found that the youth in this case needed to be sentenced as youth rather than as adults because what the evidence here didn’t meet that threshold set out by the Supreme Court of Canada. And so that’s the latest from the Court of appeal on how judges are to deal with whether a youth or an adult sentence is appropriate for young people convicted of serious crimes.

Adam Stirling [00:22:34] Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally Speaking during the second half of our second hour every Thursday. Michael Thank you so much.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:22:40] Thanks so much, always great to be here.

Adam Stirling [00:22:42] All right quick break. News is next.

Automatically Transcribed on April 7, 2026 – MULLIGAN DEFENCE LAWYERS