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This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan:

Land title fraud can result in the loss of your home.\\xa0 Efforts to fraudulently impersonate property owners have increased along with the use of remote transactions.\\xa0

With property, other than real estate, if someone steals something and then sells it to an innocent third party, the original owner of the property stills owns it. The legal concept is the namo dat rule. The thief doesn\\u2019t own the stolen item and so can\\u2019t sell what they don\\u2019t own.\\xa0

If the stolen property is located, it would be returned to the original owner, and the innocent third party purchaser would need to locate and sue the thief to get their money back.

In British Columbia, the rules are different with respect to real estate.\\xa0

Real estate is treated differently to permit greater certainty of ownership and in order to make transactions easier.

If you applied the namo dat rule to real estate, a purchaser would need to be concerned about all of the previous transactions involving the property to determine if the person selling it was actually the legal owner and able to transfer the property to them. This could involve attempting to verify many previous transactions because if any of them was improper, the current \\u201cowner\\u201d might not own anything at all.\\xa0

In BC, we have a Torrens system for land titles. This involves the concept of indefeasible title. If someone is the registered owner of real property, they own it and this can\\u2019t be revoked or made void, absent very limited circumstances.\\xa0

If, however, a fraudster is able to impersonate a property owner and is successful in having a property sold to an innocent third party, the new purchaser becomes the owner. In this circumstance, the original owner, who was impersonated, would be compensated from a special fund. They would not, however, get their property back.\\xa0

Over the past ten years, there have been two people who were compensated as a result of their property being stolen in this way.\\xa0

Also discussed on the show is a recent case involving a BC woman making false claims on Facebook, and in instant messages, that another woman had engaged in child sexual abuse.

In order to be liable for defamation, the plaintiff needs to establish that:

1)\\xa0 \\xa0 The impugned words were defamatory in that they would tend to lower the plaintiff\\u2019s reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person;

2)\\xa0 \\xa0 That the words referred to the plaintiff; and

3)\\xa0 \\xa0 That the words were published; i.e. communicated to at least one person other than the plaintiff.

In the case discussed, all three of these requirements were met. The wrongly accused woman was awarded $20,000 in general damages, and an additional $10,000 in aggravated damages because the woman posting the false accusations continued to do so after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the plaintiff\\u2019s lawyer.\\xa0

The judge hearing the case also issued a permanent injunction to stop posting the false claims.\\xa0

Finally, on the show, a high-conflict family court case results in a 12-day trial over various issues and a $34,481 costs award against an ex-wife. The ex-wife then declares bankruptcy, which would avoid her needing to pay the costs award.\\xa0

The ex-husband was ordered to pay retroactive child support, in the amount of $19,475.\\xa0

The ex-husband tried, unsuccessfully, to have the judge apportion all of the costs award to the issue of child support, because child support, and costs awards relating to it, are not eliminated by bankruptcy.\\xa0

Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed.\\xa0