A 'liquidated sum' fight - and a CRA tax-credit hint - kept the freeze in place
A pre-judgment freeze on a film producer's funds will stand, after BC's Supreme Court rejected arguments that the underlying debt was too uncertain to garnish.
The decision in Versatile Media Ltd. v Zhang, 2026 BCSC 1032 came down on June 5, 2026, when Justice Sharma dismissed an application by film producer Jared Zhang and his company, Night Comes Productions Inc., to set aside garnishing orders Versatile Media Ltd. had obtained against them.
Versatile rents and licenses film equipment and soundstage space to producers. In June 2024 it signed an equipment-rental and soundstage agreement with Night Comes Productions for a film the company was making. Versatile says the producer agreed to pay US$1,589,151 in three installments and invoiced for each. Zhang, a director and officer of the production company's parent, also gave a personal guarantee.
When the bills went unpaid, Versatile filed a notice of civil claim on October 29, 2025, alleging the company breached the contract by failing to pay. The next day it obtained its first pre-judgment garnishing order, followed by a second on December 3 and one against Zhang personally.
Garnishment is an aggressive tool. It lets a plaintiff freeze money before trial, and courts treat it as an extraordinary remedy available only when the amount claimed is a "liquidated sum" - a figure fixed by the contract rather than left to a judge to estimate.
That distinction was the heart of the fight. The defendants argued the debt was not liquidated because, they alleged, Versatile failed to perform parts of the contract and wrongly held back motion-capture and scanning work they called "withheld assets." On their reading, the unfinished work made the amount uncertain and the garnishment improper.
Justice Sharma disagreed. She found the sum tied directly to the agreement's pricing schedule, which made it ascertainable and liquidated regardless of the parties' separate dispute over performance. A contractual fight about whether the work was done, she reasoned, does not change the nature of the repayment terms.
The court also noted that the production company never disputed the invoices or raised concerns about withheld assets until after litigation began, and had repeatedly assured Versatile it would pay in full.
One detail drew particular attention. Versatile pointed to a text message in which a director said the company's application for Canada Revenue Agency tax credits was complete and funds were expected. Versatile's evidence was that qualifying for the credit would likely have required telling the CRA that vendors had already been paid - a representation the judge found more consistent with Versatile's account than the defendants'.
The defendants' hardship argument also failed. The court accepted that film production is a financially risky business and found nothing extraordinary in the budget strain they described.
Justice Sharma dismissed the application and said Versatile is entitled to costs. She stressed the court was not ruling on the underlying contract dispute, but said Versatile had a reasonable and possibly strong case against the allegations.
