Emily Chan's challenge began with a workplace injury claim. She sought compensation for wrist and back injuries she said arose while working for Fraser Health Authority, but the Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal denied the claim. Her attempt to challenge that result in court eventually produced a separate dispute over how she was pursuing her appeals. In Chan v. British Columbia (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal), 2026 BCCA 401, the British Columbia Court of Appeal had to decide whether to disturb a chambers judge's refusal to give her more time to challenge a security for costs order, and the resulting dismissal of her appeals as abandoned.
Chan had started a judicial review of the tribunal decision and appealed procedural orders made along the way. A Court of Appeal chambers judge ordered her to provide $10,000 as security for costs after finding the proposed appeals lacked merit. Security for costs is money a party may be required to provide as protection against an eventual costs award. Chan didn't post the security. A subsequent chambers decision refused additional time to challenge the earlier order and permitted Fraser Health Authority's application to dismiss the appeals as abandoned.
Chan then asked a division of the Court of Appeal to vary that subsequent chambers order under section 29 of the Court of Appeal Act. This wasn't a fresh hearing on whether her original workplace injuries qualified for compensation. The question was narrower: had the chambers judge made a kind of error that justified appellate intervention?
The Court dismissed her application. Its published summary says she hadn't identified an error of law, an error of principle or a misconception of the facts in the chambers decision. Reporting on the judgment also describes the court's assessment that the underlying appeals and proposed challenges lacked sufficient merit to justify reopening the process, notwithstanding the circumstances Chan raised about timing and her ability to conduct the litigation.
The distinction matters because a dispute that begins with workers compensation can turn on procedural requirements before an appeal court ever reaches the merits of the workplace claim. The decision doesn't establish that Chan's alleged injuries weren't work related, and it doesn't decide whether her initial compensation denial was substantively correct. It addresses what was required to vary a chambers ruling after security for costs wasn't posted and the appeals had been dismissed.
For employers, workers and the professionals assisting them, the practical lesson concerns the path through review and appeal rather than the underlying entitlement test. Challenges to compensation decisions can involve multiple steps, separate deadlines and potentially significant costs orders. A party seeking to overturn a procedural order needs to identify a reviewable error, not simply ask an appeal panel to reconsider the dispute from the beginning.
Source: Court of Appeal for British Columbia, published judgment summary for 2026 BCCA 401. Additional procedural detail was checked against independent reporting on the October 2, 2026 decision.