Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• This foreclosure proceeding progressed through multiple hearings addressing conduct of sale, an extension of redemption, and a disputed caveat filed against the subject lands.
   
• Marketing evidence tendered as hearsay was admitted after the court found that no timely objection had been raised by opposing parties.
   
• Owners' bid to extend the redemption period was denied for lack of a reasonable prospect of repayment within the proposed timeframe.
   
• Approval of the $56.5 million sale to 1262066 B.C. Ltd. turned on whether the marketing process was business-like and the resulting price provident.
   
• A caveat filed by the debtor respondents to block registration of the transfer was rejected by the Land Title Office and became the subject of a separate appeal.
   
• Ultimately, the appeal was dismissed as a nullity because the appellants never requested written reasons from the Registrar before commencing it.
   

Facts of the case

GC Capital Inc. and Kismet Capital Ltd. (together, "GC Capital") commenced a foreclosure proceeding in August 2023 against Westfield Business Centre Ltd. and related corporate and individual respondents (the "Appellants" or "owners") concerning two parcels in Surrey, B.C.: the "622 Lands," containing a vacant, unfinished commercial building known as the Westfield Business Centre, and the "TDP Lands," intended for surplus parking. [Note: the case caption in all four decisions names this petitioner "Kismet Capital Ltd.," while the body text of 2026 BCSC 112, para. 4, refers to it as "Kismet Capital Inc." — this discrepancy appears in the source documents themselves.] GC Capital obtained an Order Nisi in November 2023. A separate foreclosure proceeding was also brought by Gulf and Fraser Fisherman's Credit Union, which obtained its own order nisi on July 20, 2023, with a redemption amount of $2,270,143.83. In an oral ruling dated May 27, 2024, Associate Judge Robertson approved the sale of a portion of the property to Manjit Saini and Amarjit Saini for $3,525,000, following a sealed-bid process. In May 2024, conduct of sale over the remaining lands passed to a second mortgagee, 0938080 B.C. Ltd., for three months before reverting to GC Capital on August 27, 2024. In October 2024, GC Capital entered into a purchase agreement to sell the 622 Lands and TDP Lands to 1262066 B.C. Ltd. (the "Purchaser") for $56.5 million. In January 2025, Justice Masuhara heard competing applications: GC Capital's request to approve the sale, and the owners' request to extend the redemption period to March 17, 2025. The owners had purchased the property in April 2022 for $55 million and owed roughly $42 million to GC Capital as first mortgagee and about $5.7 million to a third-position mortgagee. Justice Masuhara approved the $56.5 million sale and denied the extension. The sale closed on May 20, 2025. That same morning, the owners attempted to file a caveat at the Land Title Office ("LTO") to block registration of the transfer, alleging the Order Approving Sale did not permit the closing date extension that had occurred. A deputy registrar, Lindsay Bealle, summarily rejected the caveat, and the transfer was registered, with the Purchaser taking title and GC Capital receiving full repayment. The owners filed a notice of appeal from the rejection on May 29, 2025, but failed to serve the Registrar, Larry Blaschuk, as required. Justice Fitzpatrick heard the improperly constituted appeal in October 2025 and, in reasons dated January 26, 2026 (2026 BCSC 112), directed that the appeal be reset once all proper parties, including the Registrar, were served, and awarded special costs against the owners. The Registrar subsequently applied to have the reset appeal declared a nullity. In reasons dated June 30, 2026 (2026 BCSC 1220), Justice Fitzpatrick determined that the appeal was a nullity because the owners had never requested written reasons from the Registrar under section 311(1)(c) of the Land Title Act before filing it, and dismissed the appeal.

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

The proceedings engaged several provisions of the Land Title Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 250 ("LTA"). Sections 282 and 283 govern the lodging of caveats with leave of the Registrar. Section 168 permits the Registrar to summarily reject an application, including a caveat, following a preliminary inspection where it does not qualify in substance or form for registration. Section 153 addresses when an application is formally "received." Section 311(1) provides that a person dissatisfied with a summary rejection may require the Registrar to provide written reasons and, within 21 days of receiving those reasons, apply to the Supreme Court by way of appeal; section 311(2) incorporates section 309 into any such appeal. Section 309(2) requires that all affected parties, including the Registrar, be served with the court application. The BC Supreme Court Civil Rules, particularly Rule 18-3 governing appeals and Rule 22-7(1) on curable irregularities, were also engaged, as was the correct form of notice of appeal under Rule 23-6(8.1). In the earlier sale-approval proceedings, the applicable test for approving a sale required the court to be satisfied that the sale was conducted in a business-like manner and was provident in the circumstances, while the test for extending a redemption period required the property to have sufficient value as security and a reasonable, not merely possible, prospect of repayment within the extended period.

Reasoning and analysis

Across the proceedings, the courts applied established foreclosure and land title principles. In the 2024 conduct-of-sale ruling, Associate Judge Robertson admitted hearsay marketing evidence because the respondents had not given notice of any dispute with its contents, and found the higher sealed bid represented a provident sale. In the 2025 ruling, Justice Masuhara found that Colliers' marketing, led by an experienced representative, satisfied the business-like and provident tests for the $56.5 million sale, while the owners' evidence supporting an extension—including unsigned pre-sale agreements, a conditional letter of intent, and volatile BC Assessment values—did not establish a reasonable prospect of repayment; the court also noted concerns about conduct by a representative of the owners that undermined the weight given to their evidence. In the January 2026 ruling, Justice Fitzpatrick identified multiple procedural defects in the owners' appeal from the caveat rejection, most critically the failure to serve the Registrar as required by section 309(2) of the LTA and Rule 18-3(6), and directed that the appeal be reset with proper service once corrected. In the June 2026 ruling, Justice Fitzpatrick addressed the Registrar's application to strike the reset appeal as a nullity, relying on authorities holding that statutory appeal preconditions cannot be waived by the court, including Bijan Law Corp. v. Registrar of Land Titles, 2021 BCSC 887, and Cimolai v. British Columbia (Medical Services Commission), 2022 BCCA 396. The court rejected the owners' argument that the rejection notice itself constituted the "written reasons" required under section 311(1)(c), finding instead that the notice was only a preliminary annotation and that a formal request for, and receipt of, written reasons from the Registrar is a mandatory precondition to a valid appeal. Because the owners never made that request, the court concluded the appeal was fatally defective from the outset.

Ruling and overall outcome

The Court ultimately dismissed the owners' appeal from the rejection of the caveat as a nullity, having earlier approved the underlying $56.5 million sale of the lands to 1262066 B.C. Ltd. and the $3,525,000 sale of a separate portion of the property to Manjit Saini and Amarjit Saini. GC Capital Inc., Kismet Capital Ltd., and the Purchaser were the successful parties overall, having achieved court-approved completion of the sales and defeated the owners' subsequent redemption-extension and appeal efforts, while the Registrar of Land Titles succeeded in having the appeal declared a nullity. Costs were awarded against the owners in favour of GC Capital and the Purchaser (special costs relating to the earlier, improperly constituted appeal hearing) and, in the June 2026 decision, party-and-party costs were awarded to the Registrar, with further costs also ordered in favour of the petitioners and the Purchaser, offset by amounts already paid in April 2026. No single aggregate dollar figure encompassing all costs awards across the four decisions is specified in the documents provided.