Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal to declare a person a vexatious litigant under Rule 46.2(1) even when no “live” appeal is pending
• Pattern of Ms. Yashcheshen’s appellate litigation showing persistent, meritless or abusive proceedings and repeated non-compliance with court rules and procedures
• Proper characterization of interlocutory versus final orders, and the requirement to seek leave to appeal interlocutory procedural orders (including the 2024 Procedural Order in the Court of King’s Bench)
• Reliance on the Court’s inherent jurisdiction and Rule 46.2 to control its own process and prevent abuse of the appellate system
• Insufficiency and inadmissibility of much of Ms. Yashcheshen’s affidavit material in support of her cross-application, including scandalous, irrelevant, or hearsay content
• Absence of any evidentiary basis to classify SGI’s conduct as vexatious, despite its involvement in numerous reported insurance appeals, leading to dismissal of Ms. Yashcheshen’s application

Background to the dispute

The litigation between Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI) and Alicia Yashcheshen arises in the context of long-running and wide-ranging court proceedings involving Ms. Yashcheshen. In 2020, the (then) Court of Queen’s Bench declared her a vexatious litigant, requiring her to obtain leave before commencing any new action in that court. On appeal in 2022, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal confirmed the vexatious litigant designation but narrowed the scope of the order so that she needed leave only to start new claims and originating applications, not to bring interlocutory applications in existing cases. Against that background, in 2023 and 2024, Ms. Yashcheshen filed five applications in the Court of King’s Bench for leave to commence new actions against SGI in different judicial centres, all arising from motor vehicle accidents in 2000 and 2005. Chief Justice Popescul placed these leave applications under case management and issued a detailed procedural order governing how they would proceed. That order, referred to as the Procedural Order, later became the immediate trigger for the appeal-related steps in the Court of Appeal.

Procedural history in the Court of Appeal

After the Procedural Order was made in the Court of King’s Bench, Ms. Yashcheshen attempted to challenge it in the Court of Appeal. She did not file her appeal within the prescribed time and therefore applied in October 2024 to extend the time to appeal, attaching a draft notice of appeal that alleged multiple grounds of error. A single judge of the Court of Appeal, Jackson J.A., dismissed the application for an extension of time. She held that the Procedural Order was interlocutory and thus required leave to appeal, which had not been obtained, and also that there was no arguable basis on which the Court would interfere even if the order were treated as final. Meanwhile, SGI had already filed an application under Rule 46.2(1) of The Court of Appeal Rules asking that the Court declare Ms. Yashcheshen a vexatious litigant in the Court of Appeal itself. In response, Ms. Yashcheshen filed her own application under the same rule, asking that SGI be declared a vexatious litigant. By the time both Rule 46.2 applications came on for hearing, Ms. Yashcheshen’s application to extend the time to appeal the Procedural Order had been dismissed, and there was technically no “live” appeal between the parties in the Court of Appeal.

Jurisdiction to hear a vexatious litigant application without a live appeal

A key preliminary issue was whether the Court of Appeal had jurisdiction to determine a Rule 46.2(1) application when there was no active appeal or application pending between the parties. The Court held that it did. Rule 46.2(1) allows the Court or a judge, on application of any person or on a request from the Registrar, to prohibit a person from commencing proceedings without leave if that person has habitually and persistently commenced frivolous or vexatious proceedings. The text of the rule does not require that a vexatious litigant application be tied to a particular appeal. The Court emphasized the Registrar’s power to initiate the process, which is designed to address situations where there may be no single responding party with enough incentive or resources to bring an application, especially when a vexatious litigant targets multiple different opponents in separate proceedings. The Court also relied on its inherent jurisdiction to control its own process, protect the proper administration of justice, and prevent abuse. Previous authorities such as Barth, Richardson and Patel confirmed that appellate courts may entertain stand-alone vexatious litigant applications, detached from a particular pending appeal. On this basis, the Court concluded it had jurisdiction to hear SGI’s application even though the underlying time-extension application had already been dismissed and no live appeal remained.

Pattern of litigation by Ms. Yashcheshen

To determine whether Ms. Yashcheshen should be declared a vexatious litigant in the Court of Appeal, the Court reviewed her complete litigation history before it from 2018 to early 2025. Over that period, she had been an appellant or proposed appellant in 17 matters. While she achieved success or partial success in a small minority of those cases, the Court stressed that these occasional wins did not relate to the substantive merits of her underlying claims; rather, they typically involved procedural or fairness issues. The Court applied the non-exhaustive list of factors from Barth and later cases, which look at issues such as multiple meritless appeals, absence of a right of appeal, manifestly unmeritorious grounds, abuse of process, improper purposes, repetition of the same arguments across proceedings, unfounded attacks on lawyers or others, and failure to pay costs. In reviewing individual cases, the Court gave particular attention to several patterns: repeated appeals from interlocutory or procedural orders with little or no substantive merit; frequent abandonment of appeals after other parties and the Court had invested time and resources; failures to appear at hearings she herself had initiated, followed by attempts to revive or “re-hear” matters already abandoned or dismissed; and a consistent tendency to file improper or irrelevant affidavit material and to advance arguments that disregarded basic rules of evidence and procedure.

Concrete examples of vexatious conduct

The Court catalogued several specific appeals to illustrate these patterns. In some appeals, her statements of claim had been struck as frivolous, vexatious, abusive, or disclosing no reasonable cause of action, and subsequent attempts to appeal or revive matters were dismissed or abandoned. In multiple files where she abandoned an appeal, she later applied for rehearings or to set aside her own notices of abandonment, even where there was no legal basis to do so and no adequate excuse for failing to appear at earlier hearings. In other matters, she persistently sought to adduce fresh evidence that was plainly irrelevant or inadmissible, or filed scandalous affidavits and then re-filed similar material after parts were struck. The Court emphasized that such conduct had the effect of consuming an inordinate amount of judicial time and imposing unnecessary burdens on opposing parties, without advancing any legitimate claim. The Court also noted that in appeals involving SGI directly, such as her efforts to challenge interlocutory orders in CACV4274 and CACV4300 and to appeal the Procedural Order in CACV4438, her proceedings were dismissed or quashed because she failed to seek leave where required or because the appeals were without merit. In the Court’s view, this formed part of a broader, entrenched pattern of abusive litigation behaviour, not an isolated misstep.

Assessment under Rule 46.2(1)

After reviewing the cumulative record, the Court concluded that Ms. Yashcheshen met the statutory threshold of “habitually, persistently, and without reasonable cause” commencing frivolous or vexatious proceedings in the Court of Appeal. In addition to the historical pattern, the Court regarded her decision to respond to SGI’s vexatious litigant application with a mirror-image application against SGI as “highly revealing.” That cross-application was advanced despite the fact that SGI had generally appeared as a respondent or defendant in litigation and that the specific files involving SGI in the Court of Appeal had resulted in her appeals being dismissed or quashed. This, the Court said, was itself a classic example of vexatious conduct, reflecting an obstructive and retaliatory use of the litigation process rather than a good-faith assertion of legal rights.

Evaluation of the application against SGI

Turning to the merits of Ms. Yashcheshen’s own application to have SGI declared a vexatious litigant, the Court found no evidentiary foundation. It first addressed SGI’s motions to strike large portions of her affidavits, which were riddled with opinion, argument, unsourced hearsay, scandalous or inflammatory assertions, and irrelevant material. The Court agreed that this content was inadmissible and ordered that most of it be struck, leaving her application without meaningful evidentiary support. The Court then considered the few remaining aspects of her case, including her reliance on a handful of reported appellate decisions where SGI had been unsuccessful as an appellant. It held that the mere fact that an insurer has lost certain appeals, especially over a long period and in the context of its broad mandate under The Automobile Accident Insurance Act, does not demonstrate vexatious behaviour. There was no pattern of abusive litigation conduct by SGI; rather, SGI appeared largely as a routine institutional litigant defending or pursuing claims within the normal bounds of the adversarial process. Accordingly, her application against SGI was found to be wholly without merit.

The remedial order and its scope

Having found that Ms. Yashcheshen is a vexatious litigant within the meaning of Rule 46.2(1) in the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan, the Court had to craft an order that balanced two competing objectives: safeguarding her residual right to access the courts for legitimate claims, while protecting other litigants and the Court from further abusive proceedings and excessive, non-compliant filings. The Court ordered that Ms. Yashcheshen is prohibited from commencing any new proceeding in the Court of Appeal—whether an appeal, interlocutory procedure, chambers review, or application for prerogative relief—except with leave of a judge of that Court. The order applies to any proceeding she brings in her own name or through those purporting to represent her interests. The Court further directed that, where the terms of this new order conflict with the ordinary Rules of Court, the order prevails. The Registrar was instructed to prepare a formal order implementing the decision without needing approval of its form from the parties and to serve it on Ms. Yashcheshen at her address for service. Finally, the Court noted that SGI had also applied in November 2025 for a rehearing of the matter and that Ms. Yashcheshen had moved to strike that application. In light of the issuance of the Court’s reasons and formal order, both of those further applications were dismissed without costs. Overall, the outcome is that SGI’s application under Rule 46.2(1) was granted, and Ms. Yashcheshen’s cross-application was dismissed. SGI, as the successful party, is entitled to its costs of both applications “in the usual manner,” but the decision does not specify a fixed dollar amount, and therefore the total monetary award or costs figure cannot be determined from this judgment.