Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• The court considered whether academic disputes fall outside civil court jurisdiction in British Columbia.
   
• Section 69(2) of the University Act was central to determining UBC's immunity from civil claims.
   
• Security for costs was initially ordered after a chambers judge found the appeal had little prospect of success.
   
• A pending decision in a related appeal with overlapping issues ultimately shaped the outcome of the variation application.
   
• Constitutional arguments raised for the first time on appeal were found unlikely to succeed.
   
• Financial hardship alone was held insufficient to bar a security for costs order where an appeal appeared meritless.
   

Facts of the case

Oleg Bryzzhev was registered as an unclassified student at the University of British Columbia ("UBC"), where he earned course credits and was awarded a Diploma in Education – Teaching English as a Second Language in May 2022. He then enrolled in UBC's Bachelor of Arts program and sought to have his earlier credits applied toward that degree. According to the February 2026 decision, UBC denied his request outright; the April 2026 decision instead describes the appellant's allegation that UBC agreed to transfer only some of his credits, contrary to its earlier representations. Bryzzhev appealed to UBC's Senate Committee on Academic Standing, which dismissed his appeal in June 2024. He initially sought judicial review but discontinued that petition and instead commenced a civil claim in March 2025 against UBC, the UBC Senate, and the Committee on Academic Standing, advancing claims in contract, fiduciary duty, tort, and breach of statutory and Charter rights. UBC applied to strike the claim, and on July 8, 2025, a chambers judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia struck the claim without leave to amend, reported as 2025 BCSC 1285. Bryzzhev appealed that decision to the Court of Appeal. UBC then applied for security for costs of the appeal, which a chambers judge of the Court of Appeal granted on February 18, 2026 (2026 BCCA 87), ordering Bryzzhev to post $7,500 within 30 days. Bryzzhev did not post the security and instead applied to vary that order; UBC responded by applying to have the appeal dismissed as abandoned. Both applications were heard together and decided on April 30, 2026 (2026 BCCA 213).

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

The chambers judge who struck the original claim relied on section 69(2) of the University Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 468, which requires a court to dismiss an action against a university if it appears the university acted under the Act's authority, along with section 37 of the same Act, which grants universities the power to confer degrees and diplomas. The strike application itself proceeded under Rule 9-5(1)(a) of the Supreme Court Civil Rules, B.C. Reg. 168/2009, for disclosing no reasonable cause of action. Bryzzhev also filed a notice of constitutional question challenging the constitutionality of section 69, invoking the equality and mobility provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the equality provision of the Canadian Bill of Rights. The variation application was governed by section 29 of the Court of Appeal Act, S.B.C. 2021, c. 6, which sets a highly deferential standard of review.

Reasoning and analysis

In the February 2026 decision, Justice Iyer applied the test from Gardezi v. Positive Living Society of British Columbia, 2018 BCCA 84, and Chung v. Shin, 2017 BCCA 355, holding that an appellant's impecuniosity does not bar a security for costs order where the appeal has little merit. Justice Iyer found Bryzzhev's dispute was essentially academic in nature, relying on Skyllar v. The University of British Columbia, 2023 BCCA 90, which adopted reasoning from Dawson v. University of Toronto, [2007] O.J. No. 591, that courts generally lack jurisdiction over academic matters absent a breach of natural justice. Bryzzhev's constitutional challenge was also rejected because it had not been raised below, citing Quan v. Cusson, 2009 SCC 62, and because the Charter does not apply to court judgments. On that basis, security of $7,500 was ordered, based on a draft bill of costs of $12,443.20. However, in the April 2026 decision, Justice Horsman, writing for a panel that included Justices Fenlon and Edelmann, found that circumstances unknown to the original chambers judge changed the merits assessment. A separate appeal, Easley v. University of British Columbia, 2025 BCSC 680, raised substantially overlapping issues about the scope of a university's immunity for academic matters and was under reserve before a full division of the Court. The panel traced the law's evolution from Young v. Bella, 2006 SCC 3, and noted inconsistency in how courts have treated university immunity, referencing Williams v. Simon Fraser University, 2019 BCCA 41, Albu v. The University of British Columbia, 2019 BCCA 222, and Mohl v. The University of British Columbia, 2006 BCCA 70. While Bryzzhev's Charter claim remained foreclosed, the panel concluded his breach of contract claim was not bound to fail, since the scope of both common law and statutory immunity remained unsettled pending the Easley decision.

Ruling and overall outcome

The Court of Appeal allowed Bryzzhev's application to vary the earlier order and set aside the requirement that he post $7,500 in security for costs. As a result, UBC's application to dismiss the appeal as abandoned was also dismissed. No monetary award was ordered or granted to either party on these applications; the earlier security amount was set aside rather than replaced, and costs of the applications were left to be determined by the division that eventually hears the appeal on its merits.