The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) has suspended lawyer Naomi Arbabi on an interim basis following a complaint that she had engaged in "pseudolegal" practices, and was harassing her neighbour, Colleen McLelland.
Arbabi sued McLelland in October, seeking $1,000 per day for erecting a 1.7-metre-tall privacy wall that blocked Arbabi's ocean view.
McLelland sought to strike Arbabi's notice of civil claim against her.
McLelland said in court documents that she did not make the decision to take down or reinstall a privacy wall next to her unit. The re-installation, instead, was done by the strata council, she said in her notice of application.
"Naomi Arbabi uses pseudolegal tactics throughout her claim," McLelland told BIV in an Oct. 26 email.
McLelland also called Arbabi's lawsuit's arguments "pseudolegal," in court documents. She added in her notice of application that she was seeking "substantial indemnity costs" from Arbabi.
Arbabi's original notice of civil claim listed the defendant as "the woman: colleen mclelland," in small letters, and the plaintiff as "the woman: naomi arbabi," which is unusual wording and capitalization for lawsuits. Throughout that lawsuit, she used a lower-case "i" to refer to herself.
The description of the defendant in this way made the lawsuit hard to find by searching for the name of the plaintiff and the name of the defendant.
Arbabi's notice of civil claim also lists under the "legal basis" for making the claim that the suit is "based on law of the land, and not a complaint based on legal codes acts or statutes."
The LSBC told BIV today in an email: "Naomi Arbabi received an interim suspension on Dec. 28, 2023, under Rule 3-10 after an interim action board determined that extraordinary action was necessary to protect the public."
The LSBC then provided a link to elaborate on its "extraordinary action to protect the public."
"Under this rule, the decision is not made public, just the outcome," the LSBC said in its email. "The suspension will last until the order is rescinded or varied. Interim suspensions are rare."
Web links to the team at Arbabi's law firm, Envision Law Group, showed were broken, showing a "404 page not found" error message.
