The aspiring lawyer sued the LSO and consultants who helped design its licensing exams
The Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by an aspiring lawyer who sued the Law Society of Ontario after he failed his barrister exam four times, affirming a lower court order that barred him from adding more defendants to the lawsuit.
The appellate court added on Monday that the plaintiff had engaged in an abuse of process by trying to pursue negligence claims against those other defendants so late in the process, when he could have done so when filing his original statement of claim.
The dispute can be traced back to 2017, when Alexander Shaulov successfully completed the LSO’s Law Practice Program, a training and work placement course that serves as an alternative to articling. Shaulov went on to pass his solicitor exam, but failed the barrister exam four times. This prompted the LSO to tell Shaulov in 2020 that his application for a license had been deemed abandoned, in accordance with its bylaws.
In April 2021, Shaulov sued the LSO and three consultants involved in designing the law society’s licensing exams. The aspiring lawyer accused the defendants of violating Ontario’s Human Rights Code.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck all the claims against the consultants and some of the claims against the LSO. After Shaulov appealed this decision, the OCA upheld the lower court’s ruling with respect to the consultants. However, the appellate court told the lower court to reassess part of the claim against the LSO that it had struck.
Shaulov then tried to amend his claim against the consultants to include allegations of negligence. He also argued that the consultants were necessary parties to his suit against the LSO.
The lower court instructed Shaulov to file a motion to seek leave to plead his negligence claims, which he did. Another judge then dismissed his motion, and Shaulov appealed again to the OCA. He argued the judge wrongly determined that he had engaged in an abuse of process by trying to re-add the consultants as defendants in his LSO lawsuit; that his negligence claims were statute-barred; and that he could not amend his pleadings to add the negligence claims.
The OCA dismissed all of Shaulov’s arguments. The appellate court said that the question of whether the consultants could be added to the lawsuit against the LSO had been settled multiple times, and that it was an abuse of process for Shaulov to try again.
The OCA also rejected Shaulov’s argument that he could bring negligence claims even though they were statute-barred, because he had only recently discovered the facts necessary for his claims. The appellate court affirmed the lower court’s finding that Shaulov actually had all the relevant facts regarding the consultants’ involvement in his licensing application before the statute of limitations had expired.
The OCA added that the negligence claim was an abuse of process because Shaulov “could have made [them] in his original statement of claim.
“As this court has recognized, the doctrine of abuse of process applies to claims that were made or that could have been made in a prior proceeding,” the court said.
The LSO declined to comment on the decision. Shaulov is representing himself in the matter and could not be reached for comment.
