An elected councillor in Mission, British Columbia, succeeded in an earlier challenge to disciplinary resolutions passed by the municipal council. But when he asked the court to replace the ordinary award of legal costs with special costs against the city, he didn't get the result he wanted.
In Herar v. Mission (City), 2026 BCSC 1950, the BC Supreme Court considered a costs application following its 2025 decision setting aside the challenged council resolutions. Councillor Kulwinder Singh Herar argued that the council's process had damaged his standing and forced him to incur significant legal expense. He said the municipality had funded the unsuccessful defence and that special costs were the only effective way to rebuke the council's earlier conduct.
The distinction mattered. Special costs aren't a routine way to compensate someone because a public body made a decision that was later overturned. Caldwell J. applied the binding Court of Appeal decision in Smithies Holdings Inc. v. RCV Holdings Ltd., 2017 BCCA 177, which draws a line between conduct leading to litigation and misconduct in the litigation itself. The court also considered the separate, exceptional basis for public interest special costs and found that this proceeding didn't meet its requirements. The judge noted that the councillor had a personal financial interest in the outcome and that no reprehensible conduct had been found in this proceeding.
The application for special costs was dismissed on October 9, 2026, and the City of Mission was awarded Scale B costs of the application. That result didn't reinstate the council sanctions previously quashed. It resolved the narrower question of whether the costs award should be elevated.
For boards and public institutions, there are 2 different forms of accountability here. Courts can set aside decisions reached through defective processes without automatically imposing punitive litigation costs on the decision maker. Whether costs beyond the ordinary scale are justified depends on the applicable legal test and the conduct actually established in the record.
Original decision: Herar v. Mission (City), 2026 BCSC 1950, Supreme Court of British Columbia, October 9, 2026. https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/26/19/2026BCSC1950.htm