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Civil Litigation Case Dicta - Pleadings - Admissions. Gandhi v. Mayfield Arcadeium Holdings Ltd.
In Gandhi v. Mayfield Arcadeium Holdings Ltd. (Div Court, 2024) the Divisional Court allows an appeal against an order that held a lien claim was invalid for lateness in issuing the "statement of claim to enforce the lien claim".
In these quotes the court considers the role of 'claim for lien' pleadings as evidentiary admissions:The Legal Issue
[26] The question before the motion judge was whether Mr. Gandhi commenced this litigation within 90 days of his last supply of services of the project. This is a question of fact to be determined on the evidence.
[27] Mr. Gandhi commenced this action on July 10, 2023.
[28] If the date of last supply was April 2, 2023, as set out in Mr. Gandhi’s Claim for Lien form, then he commenced this lawsuit nine days too late. If the date of last supply was April 11, 2023, as Mr. Gandhi affirmed in cross-examination and as supported by the WeChat screenshots, then the litigation was commenced just in time.
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[29] The motion judge analyzed the issue as follows:[22] The contents of a claim for lien are a significant part of the statutory scheme; that document is not a mere pleading as argued by the Responding Party. Moreover, the contents of a claim for lien constitute an admission by the Responding Party under the law of evidence, an exception to the hearsay rule. In my view the testimony that they might have been mistaken are not convincing, despite other evidence given by Gandhi about relevant activity after April 2, 2023.
[23] In my view the claim for lien is to be taken at its face value in the case at bar. Powerful evidence, not present before me, will be necessary for the lien claimant to overcome the strength of assertions in his own claim for lien.
[24] Those assertions have consequences which determine the issue of which act applies and whether perfection was timely. [30] The motion judge held that because the Claim for Lien was an important document and an “admission” for the purposes of the law of evidence, powerful evidence is necessary for a lien claimant to overcome its contents.
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Question of Law
[36] No law is cited for the proposition that a Claim for Lien form has special status as evidence in a lien proceeding.
[37] The fact that a statement in a document is an “admission” for the purposes of the law of evidence just means that it is admissible in evidence despite being hearsay. If a document is used to prove the truth of its contents, it is hearsay because it is a statement made out of court. Hearsay evidence is presumptively inadmissible unless there is an applicable exception to the exclusionary rule.
[38] Admissions are a recognized exception to the hearsay exclusion rule. Admissions are anything said, written, or done by a party tendered by the opposite party in evidence: Lederman, Bryant, and Fuerst, The Law of Evidence in Canada, Fourth Edition (Markham: LexisNexis Canada, 2014) at §6.417.
[39] The fact that a piece of evidence is an admission, i.e. a statement made by a party out of court, just makes it admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule. It has no greater significance.
[40] However, there is a recognized category of formal admissions made in pleadings, and formal documents in litigation can be subject to special rules to limit a party’s ability to withdraw that kind of admission. See, for example, Rule 51 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, RRO 1990, Reg 194. But as Lederman et al. note at §6.418,As in the case of all admissions, except those known as “judicial or formal admissions”, the party who made it may later lead evidence at trial to reveal the circumstances under which the admission was made in order to reduce its prejudicial effect. [41] The motion judge accepted that Mr. Gandhi’s Claim for Lien was not a pleading. Its contents, no doubt, are an admission by Mr. Gandhi. That means that they are provable against him in evidence for the truth of their content despite being a statement made out of court and therefore hearsay.
[42] But, absent a formal judicial admission and an applicable special standard, like Rule 51 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, the date in a Claim for Lien form has no special status requiring especially “powerful evidence” to rebut it.
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