MeowMix’s legal expert friend has weighed in on Miriam Yaniv’s lawsuit against her strata – the one where Jessica Yaniv Simpson is acting as her “public servant and legal advocate”. One thing we both felt important to add is that these legal opinion pieces are not “complete”. We’re very careful not tell Jonny things that would help him.
Another day, another frivolous lawsuit. The fatal flaw to Jonny’s latest legal bitchfest is that the facts alleged in the pleadings do not support a cause of action.
He first alleges that the strata is negligent. Even if everything he wrote were true (which it isn’t), he does not make out the elements of negligence. The absolutely KEY element is that negligence requires loss to be actionable. You can be wildly negligent in the colloquial sense, but if no damage occurs, there is no legal negligence. For example, Jonny can drive like an absolute moron, but people can’t sue him for negligence unless he hits them. Risk doesn’t cut it.
Jonny also fails to prove some of the other elements of negligence, but I’m not teaching Jonny first-year torts, and so I’m not going to go on about the elements of negligence.
The second allegation is that the failure to install the strobe alarm has caused a “loss of enjoyment of property due to constant anxiety”. This one is even dumber.
First, “loss of enjoyment” is a term usually used in the context of personal injury. For example, when Jonny inevitably runs someone over, they will sue in part for loss of enjoyment of life due to their injuries. As noted above, no actual injury is alleged by Jonny in this action.
Loss of enjoyment of property would normally be considered as nuisance or trespass. Neither of these are made out. Regarding nuisance, Jonny does not show that an act by the strata caused a substantial and unreasonable interference with Miriam’s property rights. Trespass is clearly not at play.
Additionally, there is a duty to mitigate loss. A plaintiff must take reasonable steps to minimize the loss caused by the defendant. Failure to mitigate usually reduces damages awarded because the plaintiff has, in a sense, added to the injury.
In this case, the ability to mitigate the “loss of enjoyment” and mental distress, even if that occurred, is clear. All he had to do was to BUY THE FUCKING ALARM HIMSELF. No court will order damages for $30k in suffering when the solution was so cheap and easy, and most importantly, easily accomplished by the plaintiff.
Jonny also wants the court to order “remediation”. That is not something the Provincial Court can order as it would be a type of mandatory injunction and thus outside the Court’s jurisdiction.
This is actually some weird human rights bullshit that Jonny isn’t taking to the HRT because he knows they are on to him. Looks like the Provincial Court is too, which is why I suspect he is filing everything in his mother’s name.
On that point, Jonny is apparently now a “legal advocate”. The word “advocate” ultimately comes from the Latin “advocāre”, meaning “to call to”, via French. The French word, “avocat”, means “lawyer”, as do the Italian (“avvocato”) and Spanish (“abogado”) equivalents. As much as he tries to pretend otherwise, he is basically attempting to practice law without being a licensed lawyer. Fortunately, the only member of the public currently being harmed is someone who shares in the responsibility for his antics.
To Jonny: Please stop wasting legal resources. Some of us have actual work to get done in the courts to help people in desperate need of legal recourse. Covid is already delaying justice for those who need it. And if I have to teach you first-year torts or civil procedure one more time, because you don’t read responses from defendants’ lawyers and/or can’t get basic legal concepts through your skull despite clearly devoting your life to litigation, I will send you a bill at my regular hourly rate.
Want to help stop Yaniv from being a “public servant and legal advocate”? Report it to the Law Society of BC at this link.
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