More than 1,000 documents landed days before trial. The judge had seen enough
A shareholder's lawsuit over loans and property stays dead. A British Columbia judge refused to revive it, citing hidden documents and a derailed trial.
On June 9, 2026, the Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed an attempt by Yinghe Investment (Canada) Ltd. and its directing mind, Jian Sheng Chen, to reopen an earlier order that had thrown out their claim. The decision, Yinghe Investment (Canada) Ltd. v. CCM Investment Group Ltd., 2026 BCSC 1054, leaves the pair shut out of a case they started.
The fight runs through a closely held company. Yinghe is a shareholder of CCM Investment Group Ltd., which developed a mixed-use commercial and residential strata building in Richmond. Yinghe sued CCM for repayment of what it called shareholders' loans, and asked the court to declare that several residential strata units belonged to Yinghe even though CCM holds legal title.
CCM fired back with a counterclaim. It alleges Yinghe and Chen wrongfully converted corporate property, ran conflicts of interest, breached their fiduciary duties, and misappropriated and illegally used some of the units. Those claims have not been decided.
The case never reached trial on those questions. In September 2025, Justice Matthews struck Yinghe's claim and let CCM's counterclaim proceed unopposed, after a string of findings about how Yinghe and Chen handled the litigation. The judge found they failed to produce documents required under a November 2024 order, then used some of those same documents for their own benefit in a February 2025 injunction bid without listing them. They also did not comply with a June 2025 consent order to pay rents into their lawyer's trust account and account for them to CCM.
The breaking point came just before trial. On August 11, 2025, Yinghe and Chen produced an updated list of more than 1,000 documents, followed by 12 more a week later. Many were in Chinese and needed weeks of translation. With the trial set for September 15, 2025, the judge adjourned it, finding the late production had, in effect, ambushed the other side.
On this application, Yinghe and Chen argued the court had misread the evidence - both on how long they took to fix their disclosure and on whether they meant to obstruct the trial. They sought to file fresh affidavits and document schedules from the spring of 2025 to show good faith.
The court refused. The new material, the judge found, could have been put forward at the original hearing and would not change the outcome. Even crediting some of their points, Justice Matthews ruled, the broader pattern of conduct still justified striking the claim. Reopening, the decision said, would reward an attempt to reargue a lost case.
For anyone lending into a company they partly own, the ruling is a hard reminder. Shareholder-loan claims and ownership disputes can collapse not on their merits but on how a party behaves once litigation starts - and disclosure obligations are not optional.
