Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Portions of Emily Chan’s appeals were quashed because they challenged non-appealable procedural and case management directions rather than substantive orders.

• The court held that only the decisions setting aside the sealing order, denying anonymity, and awarding lump-sum costs were properly appealable, with the balance treated as unappealable interlocutory steps.

• A sealing order over the Court of Appeal files was refused because Ms. Chan did not show a serious risk to an important public interest beyond the ordinary loss of privacy inherent in public court proceedings.

• The application for a no-fee (fee waiver) order was dismissed as the appeals were found to be bound to fail, despite Ms. Chan’s financial hardship.

• Security for costs of the appeals was ordered in favour of Fraser Health Authority in the amount of $10,000, and the appeals were stayed pending payment due to lack of merit and concern about cost recovery.

• Additional lump-sum costs of $4,000 for the chambers hearing were awarded to Fraser Health Authority, atop earlier Supreme Court costs orders of $750 and $1,000 against Ms. Chan.

Facts and procedural background

Emily Chan was injured in the course of her work and sought workers’ compensation for injuries to her wrist and back. Her claim for compensation was denied by the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal (WCAT), leading her to commence a petition for judicial review in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on December 24, 2024. That petition was later adjourned with no new hearing date set. In the underlying judicial review, Ms. Chan proceeded against WCAT and her employer, Fraser Health Authority Reach Management, properly named Fraser Health Authority (FHA). In the Supreme Court, Ms. Chan successfully obtained an initial sealing order over her file on an ex parte basis, without notice to FHA, despite FHA having asked for notice. When FHA later challenged that order, the court set aside the sealing order, finding that Ms. Chan had misrepresented FHA’s knowledge of and interest in the application and that the legal test for a sealing order was not met. On the same day, the court heard several further applications from Ms. Chan, framed as requests for numerous directions pending the hearing of the petition, including orders about the certified record, alleged breaches of accessibility legislation, reimbursement of medical costs and amendments to an associate judge’s prior order. These “applications for directions” were all dismissed, and the court awarded FHA lump-sum costs of $750 while declining to impose special costs. The court also refused Ms. Chan’s request for an anonymity order and made housekeeping directions, such as dispensing with her signature on the form of order and requiring paper copies of materials be provided to her.

Subsequent Supreme Court orders and limits on further applications

After the initial orders, Ms. Chan filed further ex parte applications on September 15 and 23, 2025, again seeking to anonymize the court file and to set aside the earlier costs order. The first was adjourned for lack of service on the respondents. FHA then applied to address what it considered to be abusive repeat applications, arguing abuse of process, res judicata and collateral attack. On September 26, 2025, in Ms. Chan’s absence, the court adjourned her September 15 and 23 applications to the eventual petition hearing and directed that the respondents need not respond to the September 23 application. The court went further, prohibiting Ms. Chan from filing any additional applications in the petition without leave of the court or the respondents’ consent and requiring eight business days’ written notice if she sought leave. It also ordered fixed costs of $1,000 against Ms. Chan, payable forthwith, and again dispensed with her signature on the order. By this time, Ms. Chan had already filed approximately 29 affidavits, reflecting a heavily papered and procedurally complex record for an interlocutory stage.

Appeals to the Court of Appeal

Ms. Chan then turned to the Court of Appeal. On October 2, 2025, she filed a notice of appeal from the order that had set aside the sealing order, refused anonymity, dismissed her directions applications and awarded costs (the “Baker order”), later amending the notice to indicate she was seeking leave. On October 10, 2025, she filed a second notice of appeal from the order that had adjourned her later applications, restricted further filings without leave, and imposed $1,000 in costs (the “Majawa order”), without seeking leave to appeal. Both appeals were ordered heard together. FHA applied in the Court of Appeal to quash parts of the appeals for lack of jurisdiction on the basis that many of the rulings were purely procedural or case management in nature and therefore not appealable, and also sought security for costs of the appeals and for the underlying orders. Ms. Chan, in turn, applied in the Court of Appeal for a fresh sealing order over the Court of Appeal files and an order that no court fees would be payable in relation to her appeals.

Court’s assessment of appealability and jurisdiction

The court emphasized that, as a statutory court, its appeal jurisdiction is confined to orders that fall within the Court of Appeal Act. Not every pronouncement or direction by a Supreme Court judge is an appealable order, and the substance of what occurred, not simply the document labelled “order”, governs whether an appeal lies. Routine evidentiary, procedural, case management and courtroom management directions are generally not appealable midstream and must ordinarily await the final disposition of the proceeding unless the Court of Appeal Rules provide otherwise. Applying this framework, the court held that only three aspects of the Baker order were properly the subject of appeal: the setting aside of the earlier sealing order, the refusal of an anonymity order and the award of $750 in lump-sum costs. Directions such as dispensing with Ms. Chan’s signature and the refusal of her various interim “applications for directions” were treated as case management decisions and were therefore not appealable; Ms. Chan’s appeal from those parts was quashed. As to the Majawa order, the court concluded that only the adjournment of her two late-September applications to the petition hearing and the $1,000 costs order could, in principle, be the subject of a leave to appeal application. The other terms, including the restriction on further applications without leave and the notice requirements, were also purely procedural, and the appeal from those components was quashed. The court noted that Ms. Chan had neither sought leave to appeal the remaining aspects of the Majawa order nor complied with the timelines for doing so, though FHA did not seek particular relief on that point in this chambers hearing.

Sealing order and open court considerations

Turning to Ms. Chan’s fresh attempt to seal the Court of Appeal files, the court applied the Supreme Court of Canada’s framework in Sherman Estate v. Donovan. Court proceedings are presumptively open, and a party seeking a sealing order must show that openness poses a serious risk to an important public interest, that the order is necessary because reasonable alternatives will not prevent that risk, and that the benefits of the order outweigh its negative effects. The court stressed that the bar is high and that ordinary embarrassment, distress or disadvantage flowing from publicity are not sufficient to justify departing from the open court principle. In Ms. Chan’s case, the court found that her concerns about privacy were expressed in general terms, without specific evidence of a serious risk to an important public interest or to her safety. She sought an order sealing the entire file without temporal or subject-matter limits, and there was no evidence comparable to cases involving intimate partner or sexual violence, where more narrowly tailored sealing and anonymity protections have sometimes been granted. The court also considered the public interest in transparency, including the importance of openness as a check on litigation conduct, and concluded that it would be contrary to that public interest to shield Ms. Chan’s identity and behaviour in the litigation. Accordingly, the application for a sealing order over the Court of Appeal files was dismissed.

No-fee application and the merits of the appeals

On the application for a no-fee order, the court applied the Court of Appeal Rules, which allow a waiver of fees where payment would cause undue hardship and the appeal is not bound to fail, scandalous, frivolous, vexatious or an abuse of process. The court accepted that Ms. Chan is unemployed, has a disability and would face difficulty paying court fees, although it also noted that she owns real property and had not provided complete financial information. Despite being prepared to accept that fees would present hardship, the court concluded that her appeals were bound to fail. The court pointed to Ms. Chan’s focus on non-appealable procedural orders, her failure to identify legal error in the limited appealable components of the Baker order, and the highly discretionary nature of both the sealing/anonymity decisions and the costs awards. It was especially difficult to see any viable ground of appeal in relation to the adjournment order and costs in the Majawa order, which are classic discretionary rulings that attract deference and have limited practical impact on substantive rights. On that basis, the application for a no-fee order was refused.

Security for costs and costs consequences

In addressing FHA’s application for security for costs of the appeals, the court considered Ms. Chan’s financial circumstances, the merits of the appeals, the timing of the application and the likelihood that any costs awarded to the respondents would be recoverable. The court found that Ms. Chan’s appeals were plainly without merit, both because large portions were jurisdictionally defective and because there was no arguable error in the remaining appealable orders. The court also observed that Ms. Chan’s litigation conduct, including multiple ex parte applications, attempts to appeal non-appealable procedural rulings, a high volume of affidavits of questionable relevance and references to non-existent AI-generated case law, suggested a risk of expense-causing tactics and difficulty in enforcing any eventual costs awards. FHA had also shown that Ms. Chan had not paid the $1,000 Supreme Court costs order that had been made payable forthwith. FHA provided an estimate that its costs of the appeals would exceed $14,000, supported by a bill of costs. Balancing this material against Ms. Chan’s lack of income, the court ordered her to post security for costs of the appeals in the amount of $10,000, rather than the $12,500 originally sought. Each appeal was stayed pending the posting of that security, and the court specified that if Ms. Chan failed to post security by January 6, 2026, FHA would be entitled to apply to have the appeals dismissed as abandoned. The court declined to order separate security for costs of the underlying Supreme Court proceedings, finding that in light of Ms. Chan’s financial situation and the substantial security already ordered for the appeals, additional security for the trial proceedings was neither necessary nor in the interests of justice.

Overall outcome and successful party

In its disposition, the court granted FHA’s application to quash all non-appealable aspects of Ms. Chan’s appeals, leaving only limited, highly discretionary issues technically within appellate reach. It refused Ms. Chan’s applications for a sealing order and for a no-fee waiver, reinforcing the primacy of open courts and setting a clear threshold for fee relief where an appeal is bound to fail. The court ordered security for costs of the appeals in the amount of $10,000 in favour of Fraser Health Authority, stayed both appeals pending the posting of that security and permitted FHA to seek dismissal of the appeals as abandoned if security is not posted by the stated deadline. Additionally, the court awarded FHA lump-sum costs of $4,000 for the chambers hearing, on top of the earlier Supreme Court costs awards of $750 and $1,000 already made against Ms. Chan. Taken together, these determinations confirm Fraser Health Authority, supported by WCAT as a respondent, as the successful party in this appellate chambers decision, with a total of $5,750 in costs awards and $10,000 in ordered security for costs standing in its favour, while Ms. Chan’s appeals remain effectively on hold unless she satisfies the security requirement.