Background
Wayne Moore, a self-represented appellant, was before the British Columbia Court of Appeal on two consolidated applications (dockets CA50328 and CA51220) arising from a Supreme Court of British Columbia order dated December 15, 2025. At the opening of the June 4, 2026 hearing, Moore raised an objection to Justice Abrioux presiding, asserting the judge was in a conflict of interest.
The basis for Moore’s objection was a notice of civil claim (NOCC) he had recently filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia (docket S263765, filed May 20, 2026), which named Justice Abrioux — along with more than 50 other defendants, including the judge’s former law firm Quinlan Abrioux — as a defendant. Justice Abrioux stated he had no prior knowledge of the NOCC until Moore raised it at the hearing. The justice reserved judgment on the recusal question before ruling on the underlying applications.
The NOCC’s allegations related to an incident in which Moore allegedly was denied entry to a union pension and health meeting in Delta, B.C. on May 4, 2024, as well as to Workers Compensation Appeal Tribunal decisions and the very proceedings before the Court of Appeal. Although the former firm Quinlan Abrioux was named as a defendant, the NOCC contained no specific references to it in its body.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Abrioux dismissed the recusal application. Applying the well-established framework for recusal, the justice noted that such applications are decided by the judge to whom they are directed. The governing test, drawn from Committee for Justice and Liberty v. National Energy Board, 1976 CanLII 2 (SCC), asks what a reasonable, informed, and right-minded person — viewing the matter realistically and practically, and having thought it through — would conclude about whether the judge could decide fairly.
The justice found that Moore had not satisfied the high burden required to establish either actual bias or a reasonable apprehension of bias. Justice Abrioux had no knowledge of the matters in the NOCC except for the appellate record itself, and he had left his former firm approximately 14.5 years earlier upon his appointment to the bench. No specific allegations in the NOCC linked the former firm to any wrongdoing, and the circumstances did not give rise to any serious grounds supporting an apprehension that the justice would decide the applications other than fairly and objectively.
Key Takeaways
- A recusal application must be decided by the very judge against whom it is directed — there is no entitlement to have a different judge rule on the request.
- Being named as a defendant in a civil claim filed by a litigant does not, without more, establish a reasonable apprehension of bias; the party seeking recusal bears a high burden to show a reasonable and informed person would conclude the judge cannot decide fairly.
- A lengthy passage of time since a judge’s association with a former law firm (here, over 14 years) and the absence of any substantive allegations linking that firm to the disputed matters weigh strongly against a finding of bias or conflict.
- Filing a lawsuit naming a presiding judge as a defendant is not, by itself, a mechanism that automatically triggers recusal or disqualifies the judge from continuing to hear a matter.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the principle that the integrity of judicial proceedings cannot be undermined by a litigant’s unilateral act of naming a presiding judge in collateral litigation. Courts have long recognized that permitting such a tactic to compel recusal would create an easy mechanism for litigants to forum-shop or derail proceedings by simply filing a lawsuit against any judge they wished removed from their case.
For practitioners, the decision is a concise reminder of the stringent legal standard governing recusal applications in British Columbia, as synthesized through cases such as Walker v. Kierans, 2024 BCCA 119, and Taylor Ventures Ltd. (Trustee of) v. Taylor, 2005 BCCA 350. Judges are presumed impartial, and displacing that presumption requires demonstration of serious, concrete grounds — not merely the existence of a lawsuit in which the judge happens to be named among dozens of defendants.