Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Timeliness of seeking leave to appeal and whether a one-month delay in filing justified an extension in the “interests of justice.”
• Adequacy and credibility of the moving party’s explanations for delay, including claims of procedural confusion and a family emergency.
• Consequences of walking out of the Licence Appeal Tribunal hearing, leaving the applicant with no evidence to meet his onus under s. 17 of the Trust in Real Estate Services Act, 2002.
• Threshold for granting a second-level appeal (leave from the Divisional Court to the Court of Appeal), including whether any issues of public importance or general legal significance were raised.
• Allegations of procedural unfairness at the tribunal and Divisional Court levels, including complaints about lack of recording, denial of adjournment, and alleged misstatements by RECO’s counsel.
• Scope of appellate intervention when the Divisional Court has already found the appeal and judicial review grounds to be without merit and when the proposed appeal is “manifestly” lacking any chance of success.

Background and regulatory context

The case arises from the regulation of real estate professionals in Ontario under the Trust in Real Estate Services Act, 2002, S.O. 2002, c. 30, Sched. C (the “Act”). Amarjot Lamba was a registered real estate broker whose licence was revoked on March 3, 2022. To have his licence reinstated, he was required to satisfy the statutory conditions in s. 17 of the Act. That provision allows reinstatement where either new or other evidence is available, or where a material change in circumstances has occurred since the prior decision. The Real Estate Council of Ontario (“RECO”), acting as the regulator, was not persuaded that these statutory preconditions were met and issued a Notice of Proposal (NOP) to deny reinstatement. Mr. Lamba appealed the NOP to the Licence Appeal Tribunal (LAT), which is the specialized administrative tribunal that hears appeals from such regulatory decisions.

The Licence Appeal Tribunal hearing and its consequences

At the LAT hearing, a critical procedural turning point occurred. After the tribunal denied his request to adjourn, Mr. Lamba chose to walk out of the hearing. The LAT decided to proceed in his absence. Because he left, he presented no evidence to support his claim that he had new or other evidence or that there had been a material change in circumstances within the meaning of s. 17 of the Act. Given that the burden rested on him to demonstrate that he met the statutory criteria, and he chose not to participate, the LAT dismissed his appeal from the NOP. The Court of Appeal later emphasized that this decision to leave the hearing was “fatal” to his case: the tribunal had no material on which it could find in his favour, and there was no obligation to adjourn simply because a party walked out after an adjournment request had already been denied.

Proceedings before the Divisional Court

Following the LAT decision, Mr. Lamba turned to the Divisional Court. He both appealed the LAT’s decision and sought judicial review, asserting in substance that there had been procedural unfairness. His arguments included that the proceeding had not been recorded and that the hearing had not been fairly conducted after his adjournment was refused. The Divisional Court, in a decision dated November 19, 2025, declined to conduct a judicial review, holding that the issues could adequately be addressed through the statutory appeal route. It further found that his grounds of appeal lacked merit, and therefore there was no basis to grant relief either on appeal or by way of judicial review.

Prior litigation history and credibility of explanations

In assessing the matter now before it, the Court of Appeal noted that this was not the first time Mr. Lamba had engaged the appellate process in similar regulatory disputes. He had previously sought leave to appeal Divisional Court decisions to the Court of Appeal, including in Lamba and Whitehill Realty International Inc. v. Registrar, Real Estate and Business Brokers Act, 2002 (where leave to this Court and then to the Supreme Court of Canada was refused) and in Lamba v. Mitchell, 2022 ONCA 164, in which a prior request for an extension of time to appeal was denied. In light of this history, the Court rejected as not credible his claim that he did not understand the procedural requirements or filing deadlines for seeking leave to appeal. The Court also found unpersuasive his assertion, raised for the first time in oral argument, that contradictory information on the Court’s website confused him. It reasoned that if he truly found the information unclear, he could have contacted the Court for clarification. Similarly, the Court found no evidentiary basis and insufficient detail to support his claim that an unspecified illness of his mother prevented him from attending to the appeal within time.

The motion for an extension of time and governing legal test

The proceeding before the Court of Appeal was a motion by Mr. Lamba for an extension of time to file his application for leave to appeal from the Divisional Court’s decision. He had missed the 15-day statutory window by approximately one month. The Court reviewed the established criteria for granting an extension of time, which include: (i) whether the moving party intended to appeal within the relevant period; (ii) the length of and explanation for the delay; (iii) prejudice to the responding party; and (iv) the merits of the proposed appeal. These factors are not a rigid checklist but guide the overarching inquiry into what the justice of the case requires. The responding party, RECO, opposed the extension solely on the basis that the proposed appeal lacked any merit. The Court of Appeal endorsed the principle that a clear lack of merit alone can justify refusing an extension, noting that this proposition had already been applied in a prior decision involving Mr. Lamba’s late appeal. While the Court stated it had considered all usual factors—including the relatively short delay and the alleged explanations—it concluded that even taken together these did not outweigh the decisive factor: the proposed appeal was “entirely without merit.”

Threshold for a second appeal and absence of issues of public importance

The motion also required the Court to consider the standard for granting leave for what would effectively be a second appeal (from the Divisional Court to the Court of Appeal). Relying on authorities such as Sault Dock Co. Ltd. v. Sault Ste. Marie (City) and Iness v. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the Court reiterated that leave in such circumstances is granted only in exceptional cases. Typically, such cases raise pure questions of law or mixed fact and law of broad importance beyond the immediate parties, such as significant interpretations of legislation or clarification of legal principles that require appellate resolution, or involve special circumstances of public importance or justice. The Court held that none of these markers was present. The issues raised by Mr. Lamba did not engage any broader public interest. They were highly specific to his own conduct and circumstances and did not warrant a second-level appeal.

Analysis of the proposed grounds of appeal

The Court examined each of the grounds that Mr. Lamba put forward in support of his proposed leave application. First, he alleged that the Divisional Court erred in its interpretation of the phrase “material change in circumstance” in s. 17 of the Act, and in failing to prescribe a pathway or criteria for reinstatement. The Court of Appeal found that these arguments had “absolutely no merit.” These points had not even been argued before the Divisional Court, and, more fundamentally, because no evidence was placed before the LAT, there was nothing on which the tribunal was required to interpret “material change” or to outline reinstatement criteria on the facts. Second, he claimed procedural unfairness in that the proceeding was not recorded and that the LAT acted unfairly after denying his adjournment. The Court rejected this, emphasizing that there is no inherent unfairness in the absence of a formal record, particularly where a party is given (and in this case obtained) leave to arrange for transcription but then chooses not to proceed. Having voluntarily left the hearing after his adjournment was refused, he could not credibly complain that he had been denied a fair opportunity to participate. Third, in oral argument, he raised new allegations that counsel for RECO had made numerous inaccurate representations that misled the Divisional Court, and that the Registrar was under investigation or had been discredited by a government report. The Court concluded that these assertions were devoid of specifics, did not raise issues of broader significance, and had no demonstrated connection to the correctness of either the LAT’s or the Divisional Court’s decisions.

Outcome and costs

In the final analysis, the Court of Appeal held that this was one of the rare situations where it was in the interests of justice to refuse an extension of time even after a relatively brief delay. It emphasized that no injustice was being done to Mr. Lamba by denying his motion: he had already received a full hearing before the LAT and a full appeal before the Divisional Court, yet now sought the privilege of a second appeal without advancing any coherent or arguable basis for leave to be granted. The Court therefore dismissed his motion for an extension of time to apply for leave to appeal and ordered him to pay costs to the Registrar/RECO in the amount of $2,000, inclusive of disbursements and applicable taxes, making the Registrar (through RECO) the successful party with a total monetary award in this decision of $2,000.