A Burnaby woman’s claim that she didn’t know her former friend and real estate agent was suing her didn’t stop a judge from ordering her to pay nearly $150,000.
Xiao Ji Zhou bought a home in Delta in March 2011 for $550,000 and sold it in January 2019 for $709,000, according to a B.C. Supreme Court ruling this month
But Jenny Sai Kiang Lee, a retired mortgage broker and real estate agent, said she and Zhou had been friends and made a deal involving the property, according to the ruling.
Lee said they had agreed to buy the Delta property as a joint venture, with Lee’s company kicking in the $137,500 down payment and other contributions and Zhou managing the property.
Lee said the pair had verbally agreed to share the profits from the eventual sale of the property in proportion to their contributions to the down payment.
(Zhou later paid back $49,990 towards down payment, according to Lee.)
But Zhou sold the home in January 2019, and Lee said she didn’t find out until August 2020 or get any of the proceeds, according to the ruling.
She filed a lawsuit in December 2020, seeking her share of the profits as well as repayment of other money she’d spent on the property, including costs related to a tenant grow-op.
Lee made numerous efforts to serve Zhou with legal papers, both at her Edmonds condo and at her sister’s Burnaby house, according to the ruling.
The court eventually granted a $149,934.52 default judgment against Zhou in her absence in June 2021, and a certificate of judgment was registered against the title of her Edmonds Condo in October.
Only then did Zhou respond to the lawsuit, saying she would be applying to have the default order set aside, according to the ruling.
Zhou said the Land Title Office notice in October was the first she’d heard about the lawsuit.
She said she’d moved to Mission, and the tenant in her Burnaby condo hadn’t forwarded any of the legal documents.
Papers sent to Zhou’s sister’s house in Burnaby also hadn’t been forwarded, according to Zhou.
As for phone messages, she said she didn’t know how to check voicemail on her cellphone.
Zhou denied the existence of the verbal agreement with Lee. She said Lee is not a “credible individual” and that she didn’t owe Lee any money.
For the default order to be set aside, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Sheila Tucker said it was up to Zhou to prove she hadn't “wilfully or deliberately" failed to respond to Lee’s lawsuit.
Tucker concluded Zhou had not proven it and that her evidence was “vague and contains gaps.”
“In my view, Ms. Zhou was, at best, wilfully blind,” Tucker wrote.
She dismissed Zhou’s application, upheld the $149,934.52 default judgment and ordered Zhou to pay Lee’s court costs.
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