Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Urgent procedural relief was sought to obtain short-notice hearings for a further stay of an order of possession in a residential tenancy dispute.

• The tenant’s delay in bringing further applications after the first stay was dismissed undermined any claim of ongoing urgency for additional short-notice relief.

• The court deferred to the Registrar’s principled, discretionary refusal to grant repeated urgent applications that sought substantially the same relief.

• Allegations of reasonable apprehension of bias against the Registrar and prior judges were rejected as unsubstantiated and indicative of attempted judge-shopping.

• The court found little likelihood that another chambers judge would grant a stay or that an application to vary the earlier stay decision would ultimately succeed.

• The fourth urgent application for short notice to review or vary the Registrar’s decisions was dismissed, leaving the landlord free to enforce the order of possession, with no specific monetary awards identified.

Facts and background of the tenancy dispute
William Komer was a tenant of a residential unit owned by BCIMC Realty Corporation and Yaletown 939 Holdings Inc. in British Columbia. He had been renting the unit since May 2021. From July 2025 onward, he stopped paying rent, prompting the landlord to serve him with a 10-day notice to end the tenancy for unpaid rent approximately a month later. The Residential Tenancy Branch ultimately granted an order of possession in favour of the landlord, authorizing recovery of the rental unit. Mr. Komer sought to challenge that outcome through the courts.

Judicial review and appeal proceedings
The Director of the Residential Tenancy Branch and the Attorney General of British Columbia were also named as respondents in the litigation. On judicial review in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the court upheld the Residential Tenancy Branch’s order of possession, delivering oral reasons on October 28, 2025. On the same day, Mr. Komer filed a notice of appeal to the Court of Appeal. He also filed an urgent application seeking permission to bring an application for a stay of proceedings pending his appeal on shorter notice than the ordinary timelines set out in the Court of Appeal Rules.

First urgent application and initial stay ruling
On the first urgent application, the Registrar of the Court of Appeal granted permission to have a stay application heard on short notice and set it before a justice in chambers. That stay application was heard on November 6, 2025. The court applied the familiar three-part test for a stay from RJR-MacDonald and concluded that Mr. Komer had not met the criteria. The application for a stay was dismissed, but the court provided some limited relief by granting time until the end of November for him to vacate the unit, after which the order of possession would become enforceable.

Subsequent urgent applications to obtain further stays
After the dismissal of the stay, Mr. Komer filed an application on November 13, 2025 to vary that chambers decision. He did not immediately seek further urgent relief, but on November 24, 2025 he brought a second urgent application seeking permission to bring another stay application on short notice, pending the variation request. The Registrar dismissed this second urgent application, noting that Mr. Komer’s delay in returning to court undercut his assertion of urgency. The next day, on November 25, 2025, Mr. Komer filed a third urgent application seeking permission to bring an interim stay on short notice and asserting a reasonable apprehension of bias on the part of the Registrar, from whom he sought recusal. On November 26, 2025, the Registrar refused to set that third urgent application down for hearing and declined to recuse himself, observing that the relief sought substantially duplicated what had already been dismissed and that no basis for bias had been substantiated.

The fourth urgent application and issues before the court
On November 27, 2025, Mr. Komer filed a fourth urgent application. In form, it sought permission for short notice to bring an application to vary the Registrar’s decision refusing to recuse himself and dismissing the urgent application. In substance, as clarified at the hearing, he asked to vary only the Registrar’s refusal of his second urgent application and, ultimately, to secure a hearing that same day for a renewed stay application. He also sought permission to extend the time to file materials for his application to vary the initial stay ruling. He requested that this fourth urgent application be heard by a justice in chambers rather than the Registrar, and it was placed before the court during the mid-day break, when both the court and counsel for the landlord already had full hearing schedules. The central issues became whether the Registrar’s refusal to grant further urgent applications should be varied and whether the procedural route chosen by Mr. Komer warranted immediate, short-notice relief.

The court’s analysis on urgency, discretion, and bias allegations
The court viewed the fourth urgent application as arising from Mr. Komer’s inability to accept the Registrar’s principled, discretionary decision on the second urgent application. The Registrar’s reasons were found to provide a sound basis for the outcome, particularly in light of Mr. Komer’s delay in returning to court after his stay was dismissed, despite his familiarity with urgent procedures. The court concluded there was no realistic prospect that Mr. Komer would succeed in persuading a justice to interfere with the Registrar’s refusal of the second and third urgent applications. While acknowledging that the loss of his tenancy was a serious consequence, the court noted that his arguments for a stay had already been rejected and that there was little likelihood another chambers judge would reach a different conclusion or that a variation of the earlier stay decision would ultimately succeed. Turning to bias, the court applied the established reasonable apprehension of bias test, which asks whether an informed, thoughtful observer would conclude that it is more likely than not that the decision maker would not decide fairly. Against this standard, the court found no objective basis to infer bias on the part of the Registrar. Instead, it was concerned that repeated allegations of bias against various decision makers, including the Registrar and previous judges, signalled an attempt at judge-shopping by re-arguing issues already decided rather than accepting discretionary rulings.

Outcome of the urgent application
In the result, the court declined to grant the fourth urgent application for short notice to vary or review the Registrar’s decisions. The urgent application was dismissed, leaving the Registrar’s refusals of the second and third urgent applications intact and maintaining the earlier dismissal of the stay. This outcome effectively preserved the landlord’s ability to enforce the order of possession and proceed with eviction after the grace period previously granted. There was no express award of damages or specific monetary relief in this decision, and no particular costs amount was identified.