Background
Rosa Donna Este appealed a March 2026 Supreme Court of British Columbia order granting the District of West Vancouver a permanent statutory injunction barring her, Mehran Taherkhani, and others acting for them from interfering with demolition of her West Vancouver home. The underlying demolition order had already been extensively litigated, including earlier proceedings in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the Court of Appeal, and an unsuccessful application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
On July 24, 2026, Dr. Este sought a stay of the permanent injunction pending appeal. Justice MacNaughton dismissed that request in reasons indexed as 2026 BCCA 327, concluding that her reliance on alleged new evidence, including an engineering report said to find the home structurally sound, was an abuse of process because the demolition issue had already been finally litigated. Dr. Este then sought to have an application for an injunction stopping the demolition heard urgently.
The Court’s Holding
Registrar Outerbridge dismissed the urgent-application request. Although the Court of Appeal may grant injunctive relief under s. 30(c) of the Court of Appeal Act, such relief is exceptional and is intended to preserve appellate rights and prevent an appeal from being frustrated. The appeal itself principally concerned the statutory injunction, not the underlying demolition order; the lower court had also refused to restrain the District from demolishing the home on the basis that the matter had already been litigated.
The proposed injunction substantially overlapped with the stay application dismissed days earlier and raised many of the same arguments. The Registrar held that this created a real possibility the arguments would again be precluded as duplicative. More importantly, Dr. Este had delayed: she filed her appeal in April, learned of the engineering report later that month, but did not seek a stay until July and had sought no earlier injunctive relief. Given the compressed timeline, likely duplication, prejudice and expense to the District, and the extensive prior litigation, the balance of prejudice favoured the District.
Key Takeaways
- An urgent application requires genuine emergent circumstances, not urgency created by delay.
- Applicants seeking to stop imminent action must pursue available relief promptly under ordinary appellate timelines.
- A new injunction request may face preclusion where it substantially repeats issues recently decided on a stay application.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that appellate courts will protect scarce chambers time and will not ordinarily fast-track a late application that places a responding party under compressed and costly obligations. Imminent irreparable consequences alone do not establish urgency where the applicant had a meaningful earlier opportunity to seek relief.
It also illustrates the limited role of appellate injunctions in disputes whose substantive issues have already been litigated to conclusion. A pending appeal from an enforcement injunction does not automatically reopen the merits of the underlying demolition order.