In September 2016, a numbered holding company incorporated in Ontario acquired shares in a publicly traded mining firm headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, setting in motion a sequence of events that would eventually spawn 5 separate court proceedings across 2 provinces and culminate in applications before a British Columbia Supreme Court judge in 2025 to strike oppression and conspiracy claims as abuse of process. The individual behind the numbered holding company had orchestrated the share acquisition as the opening move in what was intended to be a takeover attempt, but by 2017 and 2018, the effort had faltered, and the relationship between the investor and the mining firm's management had deteriorated into open hostility. The claims advanced by the holding company and its principal alleged that various acts and omissions by the target company and its directors had caused damage, but a threshold question hung over every proceeding: were the harms complained of suffered by the complainant personally, or were they harms to the corporation itself that could only be vindicated through a derivative action brought in the company's name? This distinction, far from being a technical nicety, determines whether a complainant has any right to be in court at all and whether the remedy sought can lawfully be granted.