Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Plaintiff’s multiple statements of claim were found to be incomprehensible and lacking the material facts necessary to support any cause of action.
• The motion focused on Rules 21 and 25 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, examining whether the Third Claim disclosed a reasonable cause of action and complied with pleading standards.
• Numerous pleaded legal bases (fraud, breach of contract, negligence, duty of good faith, and statutory breaches) failed for want of particularized factual allegations tying conduct to elements of each claim.
• The court highlighted that RBC Direct Investing Inc. is an order-execution-only dealer, and the dispute concerned alleged unauthorized Moderna-related short-sale transactions, not advisory duties.
• After clear judicial guidance and repeated opportunities, the plaintiff was still unable to produce an intelligible, rule-compliant claim, leading the court to find the defects incurable.
• Costs on a substantial indemnity scale of $25,780.76 were ordered against the plaintiff in favour of RBC Direct Investing Inc. following the successful motion to strike.

Factual background
Ting Wang was a self-directed investment client of RBC Direct Investing Inc. (RBCDI), an order execution-only investment dealer. RBCDI’s business model was to provide self-directed investors with an online platform through which they could buy and sell securities, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, and guaranteed investment certificates at low cost, on the understanding that no investment advice or recommendations would be provided about particular securities. Wang accepted that he did not rely on RBCDI for investment advice and instead developed and implemented his own trading strategies. The dispute arose from Wang’s attempt to short-sell Moderna stock. Believing that Moderna’s share price was not sustainable, he used a margin account to short-sell the company’s shares. Short-selling generally involves borrowing shares, selling them at the current market price, and then later buying them back to return to the lender, ideally at a lower price to capture the difference as profit. However, short positions are subject to market volatility and margin requirements, and if prices move adversely or margin conditions are breached, a dealer may liquidate positions or take other steps to control risk and comply with regulatory obligations. Wang alleged that RBCDI executed three transactions in his account without his authorization, which he said undermined his strategy and imposed a “forced debt” upon him. He framed his losses as arising not from market risk or his own decisions but from these allegedly unauthorized trades and the way the account was administered in relation to margin and debt management.

Procedural history and evolution of the claim
Wang initiated his lawsuit by issuing a notice of action on July 24, 2023, and later serving an undated statement of claim (the First Claim) on January 3, 2024. The First Claim was 38 pages long, single spaced, and dense with evidence, graphs, extensive quotations from documents and statutes, and a wide range of legal assertions. RBCDI, finding the pleading unclear, served a demand for particulars under Rule 25.10, seeking clarification of the factual foundation of Wang’s claims. Wang responded on February 20, 2024, but his response largely repeated portions of the First Claim and did not meaningfully address the specific information requested. RBCDI then moved to strike the First Claim. Justice Akazaki heard that motion on March 10, 2025, and issued an endorsement striking the First Claim but granting Wang 45 days to retain a lawyer and deliver a fresh as amended statement of claim. In that endorsement, the court described the First Claim as verging on incomprehensible and noted that, as drafted, it had no reasonable chance of success and was unfair to RBCDI because it did not provide an intelligible articulation of the factual allegations. The court stressed that Wang needed only to explain, in plain language, what had happened so that a lawyer could frame a proper, concise pleading. Despite this clear advice and the court’s express encouragement to obtain counsel, Wang did not retain a lawyer. Instead, on April 23, 2025, he delivered a Fresh as Amended Statement of Claim (the Second Claim), which expanded to 77 pages and was again filled with evidence, quotations, and legal maxims. RBCDI informed Wang that the Second Claim still did not disclose a reasonable cause of action, still failed to plead material facts, and continued to improperly plead evidence. In response to that criticism, Wang then prepared a third version, labelled the “amended (August 2025) STATEMENT OF CLAIM,” which the court referred to as the Third Claim. This iteration ballooned to 124 pages and amplified, rather than cured, the underlying problems.

Alleged causes of action and legal theories
Across the three versions of the claim, and particularly in the Third Claim, Wang invoked a wide array of legal concepts. He repeatedly alleged fraud and fraudulent misrepresentation, asserting that wording in the Defendant’s Agreement between himself and RBCDI and in subsequent letters about debt, margin, and regulatory requirements was confusing, misleading, or intentionally crafted to deceive clients. He also alleged breach of contract based on the Operation of Account Agreement (OAA) and other purported contractual and implied terms, including alleged duties of fair dealing and good faith. In tort, Wang claimed negligence, citing RBCDI’s supposed failure to meet appropriate standards of care in its handling of his account and the Moderna short sales. He further asserted that RBCDI owed and breached duties of good faith and ethics, making numerous references to “low standards” of business conduct and to “very poor” English in the OAA, which he portrayed as evidence of an intent to mislead. Additionally, the Third Claim cited several statutes, including the Ontario Business Corporations Act (OBCA), the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA), the Bank Act, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with repeated references to specific provisions such as s. 134 OBCA and s. 122 CBCA. However, Justice Glustein found that while the Third Claim was replete with legal buzzwords and statutory citations, it did not provide the necessary factual backbone to connect these legal labels to the specific conduct of RBCDI in a way that would establish viable causes of action.

Contractual framework and policy-related terms
The Operation of Account Agreement (OAA) between Wang and RBCDI formed the primary contractual framework for Wang’s trading activities. As is typical for an order-execution-only platform, this agreement set out the terms governing the opening and operation of accounts, the use of margin, and the dealer’s rights to manage risk and satisfy regulatory and contractual requirements, including the right to take certain actions where margin obligations were not met. Wang focused on particular phrases and sections of this agreement and related notices, arguing that the language was confusing and suggestive of deceptive intent. For example, he objected to language such as “We may do so for a sale for your Account or another client’s account,” contending that this wording was not required by any rules and must therefore have been inserted solely to mislead clients. He also criticized what he described as “very, very and very poor” English in the OAA, asserting that the only reasonable explanation for such drafting was a deliberate intent to deceive. Despite these critiques, the court found that the Third Claim did not translate these concerns into legally sufficient allegations of breach. For a breach of contract, a pleading must identify the existence of a contract, the specific terms relied upon, the manner in which those terms were breached, and the damage resulting from that breach. The Third Claim did not clearly isolate the relevant contractual clauses in the OAA, did not specify what RBCDI did or failed to do that violated those clauses, and did not link particular breaches to particular losses. Similarly, for fraud or misrepresentation, a plaintiff must plead, with particularity, the misrepresentation made, when, where, and by whom it was made, its falsity, the intention to induce reliance, the plaintiff’s actual reliance, and the loss flowing from that reliance. Wang’s generalized complaints about confusing wording and poor drafting did not meet this standard of specificity.

Legal principles applied on the motion to strike
Justice Glustein carefully reviewed the established test for a motion to strike brought under Rules 21 and 25. The court emphasized that a claim will be struck if, assuming all properly pleaded facts to be true, it is plain and obvious that the claim cannot succeed, or if the pleading fails to set out the material facts necessary to support the causes of action advanced. While courts are to read pleadings generously and allow for drafting imperfections, especially where a party is self-represented, there are limits. A statement of claim must still provide a coherent, intelligible narrative of material facts set out with reasonable clarity and precision. Mere repetition of legal conclusions or broad allegations—such as repeated invocations of “fraud,” “negligence,” or “good faith”—without the underlying who, what, when, where, and how, will not suffice. The court also accepted the line of authority dealing with “incomprehensible” claims. A pleading can be struck where it is impossible to discern the causes of action or the factual foundation, such that a defendant cannot reasonably prepare a defence. In this context, the court stressed that the power to strike pleadings serves an important “housekeeping” function in civil litigation, ensuring that only claims with some chance of success and a clear articulation of issues proceed to trial. The decision further addressed the law on leave to amend, noting that while amendments are usually permitted where defects can be cured, leave may properly be refused where the pleading suffers from a radical defect, where the plaintiff has had ample opportunity to correct known deficiencies but has failed to do so, or where the procedural history shows that further attempts to amend would be futile.

Assessment of the Third Claim and denial of further amendment
In applying these principles, Justice Glustein concluded that Wang’s Third Claim still failed to disclose any reasonable cause of action and remained incomprehensible, despite generous reading. On the pleaded fraud claim, the decision found that Wang did not set out the required elements with the necessary particularity. His allegations about confusing wording and poor English in the OAA and related letters did not identify specific false statements, RBCDI’s knowledge of any falsity, reliance, or loss directly tied to such reliance. The Third Claim did not transform these criticisms into a coherently pleaded misrepresentation claim. On breach of contract, the court held that the Third Claim’s repeated but vague references to “contract” and “implied terms” were insufficient. It did not clearly identify the contractual provisions in the OAA that were allegedly breached, describe the conduct that constituted the breach, or explain how that conduct caused quantifiable loss. On good faith, although the Third Claim invoked “good faith” dozens of times and cited provisions such as s. 134 of the OBCA, it did not show how a legally cognizable duty of good faith owed by RBCDI to Wang arose, nor did it identify specific acts that constituted bad faith. The reliance on s. 134 OBCA and similar provisions was misplaced, as those sections typically concern duties of directors and officers to the corporation rather than direct duties to clients. For negligence, the Third Claim mentioned “negligence,” “duty of care,” and “tort” repeatedly but did not set out the full elements of the tort: a specific duty owed, breach, causation, and damages. Assertions that RBCDI had “low standards” or issued “bad notices” were too conclusory and lacked the necessary particularized factual underpinning. As for the statutory claims under the OBCA, CBCA, Bank Act, and Charter, the court found that Wang failed to demonstrate that these statutes governed the specific brokerage dispute in a way that created private law duties owed to him by RBCDI or that any such duties were breached. Ultimately, the Third Claim was not just poorly drafted; it was structurally unsound, argumentative, and saturated with evidence and caselaw rather than a clear statement of facts. Given the extensive procedural history, including Justice Akazaki’s earlier endorsement, RBCDI’s demand for particulars, and Wang’s opportunity to deliver three successive pleadings, Justice Glustein concluded that the deficiencies could not be cured by a further amendment and that leave to amend should be refused.

Outcome and costs
The court granted RBC Direct Investing Inc.’s motion to strike and ordered that Wang’s Third Claim be struck in its entirety without leave to amend. This brought Wang’s action against RBCDI effectively to an end at the pleadings stage, as the court was satisfied that he had been given ample opportunity and guidance yet remained unable to produce a compliant statement of claim. On costs, RBCDI sought substantial indemnity costs based in part on its prior offer to settle, which Wang had improperly attempted to place before the court. Justice Glustein held that the offer itself was protected by settlement privilege and should not have been relied upon as evidence on the motion, but nevertheless applied, by analogy, the logic of the Rules governing offers to settle in assessing costs. The court accepted that the 49.6 hours billed for the motion were reasonable and, taking into account the history of the litigation and Wang’s refusal to rectify his pleadings despite repeated warnings, ordered costs against Wang on a substantial indemnity basis. The costs were fixed in the amount of $25,780.76, inclusive of taxes and disbursements, payable by Wang to RBC Direct Investing Inc. within 30 days. Accordingly, RBC Direct Investing Inc. emerged as the successful party, and the total amount ordered in its favour in this decision was $25,780.76 in costs.