Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Jurisdictional question whether the plaintiff’s retaliation and discrimination allegations, framed partly as torts, actually fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the BC Human Rights Tribunal under the Human Rights Code.
• Characterization of the pleaded tort claims (assault, negligence, intentional infliction of mental suffering, breach of privacy, vicarious liability) as, in substance, human rights retaliation claims barred from civil court jurisdiction.
• Failure of the amended notice of civil claim to plead a viable private law duty of care or a factual basis to support negligence and breach of confidentiality in the University’s handling and disclosure of the human rights complaint.
• Insufficient factual underpinnings to sustain a claim of assault and vicarious liability against the University, particularly where the only alleged physical contact involved the plaintiff’s non-party son and occurred off-campus.
• Striking of portions of the pleading concerning the son’s alleged injuries and Human Rights Code breaches due to lack of standing and the Code’s exclusive enforcement scheme.
• Final determination that the amended notice of civil claim is plainly and obviously bound to fail, justifying dismissal of the action and an award of costs in favour of the University of British Columbia, with the exact monetary amount of costs not specified.

Background and parties

This case arises from a dispute between a self-represented plaintiff, Sergio Aquino, and the University of British Columbia (UBC). The plaintiff had filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (the “Complaint”), naming UBC and several professors, and then commenced a civil action in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. UBC applied to strike the plaintiff’s amended notice of civil claim under Rule 9-5(1) of the Supreme Court Civil Rules, arguing that the claim disclosed no reasonable cause of action, was an abuse of process, and was outside the court’s jurisdiction.

Facts giving rise to the dispute

The key factual sequence was concentrated in early March 2025. On March 4, 2025, the plaintiff served an executive assistant in the UBC president’s office with the already-filed Human Rights Tribunal Complaint, which referred to UBC and certain professors. In the days that followed, the plaintiff alleged two main incidents. First, on March 8, 2025, he and his 13-year-old son were confronted at a restaurant by two professors named in the Complaint, Dr. W. Scott Dunbar and Professor Emeritus Marcello M. Viega. The plaintiff claimed that Dr. Dunbar touched his son’s leg and that the two professors verbally harassed them, including alleged homophobic remarks and statements by Professor Viega about having a gun, potentially returning to Brazil, and holding a diplomatic passport. There was also reference to a woman at the restaurant, first described vaguely as someone who “may or may not” have been Dr. Dunbar’s wife and “may or may not” have had a gun, later amended to assert that she accompanied Dr. Dunbar and that Dr. Dunbar stated she had a gun. Second, on March 9, 2025, the plaintiff and his son were allegedly subjected to inappropriate and homophobic remarks from a “family group” of two adolescents and two adults who identified themselves as friends of Professor Viega. The pleadings did not identify this family group, nor did they clearly link their conduct to any directions from UBC or its faculty. The plaintiff alleged that these events caused him significant health impacts, including anxiety, heart palpitations and psychological distress, and that his son also suffered emotionally. However, the son was not named as a party in the civil action.

The plaintiff’s evolving pleadings and legal theories

The plaintiff first filed a notice of civil claim on April 16, 2025 and then an amended notice of civil claim on May 12, 2025. Later, he filed three further amended notices of civil claim in August 2025, without UBC’s consent or leave of the court, which rendered those later versions nullities under the Rules. Nonetheless, the court reviewed these defective amendments to better understand the true nature of the plaintiff’s claims. Across these iterations, the plaintiff advanced multiple causes of action. He initially pleaded assault and battery (with a theory of vicarious liability on UBC’s part), negligence (framed as a failure to provide a safe, non-discriminatory environment and to investigate his human rights complaint properly), intentional infliction of mental suffering (tied largely to the homophobic insults and intimidation), and breach of UBC’s statutory duties under the Human Rights Code. Later versions deleted the express reference to a statutory breach under the Code but added references to “criminal harassment,” “intimidation,” “conspiracy,” and “breach of privacy,” while emphasizing the alleged improper handling and premature disclosure of the Complaint to the two professors. The plaintiff also alleged that UBC, under the leadership of its president, had mishandled his human rights complaint in a way that led directly to criminal conduct and eventually his hospitalization. In substance, his narrative was that UBC improperly disclosed his Tribunal complaint to the professors, failed to conduct a proper investigation, and thereby set in motion retaliatory, homophobic, and intimidating behaviour by those professors and others.

Jurisdiction and the role of the Human Rights Code

A central issue was whether the Supreme Court had jurisdiction over what, at root, were allegations of retaliation and discrimination tied to a human rights complaint. The court reviewed well-established authority that human rights legislation, including the British Columbia Human Rights Code, creates a comprehensive enforcement scheme that lies within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Human Rights Tribunal, subject only to judicial review. The judgment highlighted section 43 of the Code, which prohibits retaliatory or adverse treatment because a person has made, may make, or is named in a complaint, or otherwise assists in a proceeding under the Code. The court held that the plaintiff’s allegations, taken as a whole, fit squarely within this anti-retaliation provision: he claimed that after UBC received his Complaint and allegedly disclosed it to the named professors, those professors and their associates subjected him and his son to adverse, homophobic, and intimidating conduct. Even where he styled his claims as torts—assault, negligence, intentional infliction of mental suffering, breach of privacy and vicarious liability—the “essential character” of the dispute was that he was being mistreated because of his exercise of rights under the Human Rights Code. Drawing on the Supreme Court of Canada’s approach in Weber v. Ontario Hydro, the court emphasized that it is the true nature of the dispute, not the legal labels attached, that determines jurisdiction. Here, the essential character of the claims arose under the Code and were the type of issues that could be remedied through the Human Rights Tribunal process. Accordingly, the court concluded that all of the plaintiff’s human-rights-based and retaliation claims fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Tribunal, not the civil courts.

Abuse of process and concurrent proceedings

The University also argued that pursuing similar matters concurrently before the Tribunal and the Supreme Court constituted an abuse of process. The court accepted in principle that parallel proceedings on the same factual matrix and for the same relief can undermine finality, consistency, and judicial economy. However, after comparing the pleadings, the court found that the plaintiff’s Tribunal complaint focused primarily on his experience as a graduate student between 2015 and 2018, alleging assault, bullying, and discrimination based on religion and perceived mental illness. By contrast, the civil claim centred on the discrete incidents in March 2025 and the alleged retaliation linked to his later human rights complaint. Because the underlying factual bases and time frames differed significantly, the court held that the amended notice of civil claim did not simply duplicate the Complaint and therefore did not amount to an abuse of process on that narrow ground.

Failure to disclose a reasonable cause of action

Even putting jurisdiction aside, the court held that the amended notice of civil claim was fatally deficient on standard civil-pleading principles. First, the plaintiff had no standing to advance claims about his son’s injuries in this action, because the son was not a party. All references to alleged harm to the son, as well as claims premised on his suffering, were ordered struck. Second, the claim for breach of statutory duty under the Human Rights Code could not proceed in the civil courts, because the Code provides its own exclusive enforcement scheme; that portion of the pleading was also struck. Third, the plaintiff had improperly claimed a specific amount of general damages ($75,000), contrary to the Rules, and sought a court order directing UBC to review its policies for compliance with the Canadian Human Rights Act, a remedy not available through a civil action of this kind. These remedial aspects were removed as well. After those deletions, the core remaining allegations sounded in negligence and vicarious liability. The negligence theory was that UBC owed him a duty of care to investigate his complaint and maintain confidentiality, and that it breached that duty by disclosing the Complaint to the professors without first completing an investigation. The court found no pleaded foundation for any private law duty of care in those terms, and pointed out that, if anything, a competent investigation would ordinarily require disclosure to and interviews with the very individuals named in the Complaint. There was likewise no pleaded basis for a duty to keep the Complaint confidential, nor any allegation of a recognized confidentiality arrangement or privacy obligation that could ground liability in tort. As a result, even assuming the pleaded facts to be true, the negligence claim was “plainly and obviously” bound to fail. Regarding vicarious liability, once the allegations tied exclusively to the son’s physical contact were removed, the pleading did not contain any concrete facts describing wrongful physical acts against the plaintiff himself, only bare assertions of being “physically assaulted” in the sense of being exposed to words and remarks. Moreover, there were no facts linking the professors’ alleged misconduct to their employment duties, to any direction or control by UBC, or to any occasion when they were acting in the course of their employment. The conduct occurred off campus, outside their official roles, and without any pleaded facts showing that the University orchestrated or authorized the behaviour. The separate “family group” on March 9, 2025 was not alleged to be connected to UBC in any legally relevant way, further undermining any attempt to attribute their words to the University. On this analysis, the vicarious liability claim was also bound to fail.

Outcome and costs

Having concluded that the plaintiff’s claims were, in substance, human rights retaliation allegations within the exclusive jurisdiction of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, and that even the tort-based aspects of the amended notice of civil claim did not disclose a viable cause of action, the court ordered that the amended notice of civil claim be struck in its entirety and that the action be dismissed. The court further declined to grant leave to amend, finding that the underlying claim was not merely poorly drafted but fundamentally incapable of being salvaged by further amendment or additional particulars. As a result of the dismissal, the successful party was the University of British Columbia. The court held that the University is entitled to its costs at Scale B. However, the reasons do not specify any exact monetary figure for those costs, and the total amount ultimately payable in favour of the University cannot be determined from this decision alone.