Court tells realtors to drop legal challenge

A B.C. court ruling allows a Coquitlam condo project to be built, despite a $1.8-million legal claim against the project by two real estate agents who say they invested that amount of money in the development in an oral contract.

Zhijian (Anna) Zhang and Nevin L. Low of NuStream Realty tried to sue developers Xiao Hong Huang, Ze Wen Zong and two numbered companies for a piece of the project.

But a B.C. Supreme Court judge said the best chance the real estate agents have of recouping any money would be to allow the residential and commercial project at Lougheed Highway and Blue Mountain Street to be built.

His decision ordered the real estate agents to drop pending legal action for now against the developer in exchange for damages, but leaves the door open for them to sue the developers in future if their situation changes.

The ruling also unveiled the lack of formal legal documents in a deal with high stakes.

Judge S. Marchand in his ruling chastised both sides for being unprepared for the one-day hearing last month, saying the “evidentiary record before me is incomplete.”

“The parties have not disclosed a number of relevant documents or complete copies of other relevant documents,” the judge wrote in his June 4 ruling. “The parties have not fully or clearly expressed certain material facts.”

And Marchand noted he found it unusual that Zhang and Low would have entered into only oral contracts for the deal with the developers.

He said the “terms of the alleged agreements lack certainty.”

And he said, “It may be hard for the court to accept that sophisticated parties who reduced various agreements to writing would not have done likewise with respect to such important matters.”

Zhang and Low earned “sizable consulting/referral fees” on the sale of three lots to the developers, but deferred their fees when the developers were having difficult securing financing to launch the project.

Zhang and Low said they then entered into an oral contract instead to invest what they were owed in the project and to receive four penthouse suites, plus right of first refusal on two other suites in payment.