The fine print she signed sealed her fate in court
A court has dismissed an investor's claim that unauthorized trades drained her Scotia Capital account and made 300 NVIDIA shares disappear.
Justice Loo of the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled on September 22, 2026 that the investor's case against Scotia Capital - and her bid to pull The Bank of Nova Scotia into the lawsuit too - didn't hold up.
The investor opened a Scotia iTRADE margin account in March 2022 and racked up more than 500 trades over the following months. She later said she never authorized many of those trades and that her money simply vanished. Her first claim, filed in Small Claims Court in March 2024, sought US$47,998.10. Once the case moved to Supreme Court, she filed an amended claim in April 2026 for $49,801 and those 300 missing NVIDIA shares, this time adding accusations of negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, misrepresentation and conversion.
The case never reached a full trial. Justice Loo decided it could be resolved quickly, given the modest dollar amount and the two years that had passed without the investor pushing for more evidence. What sealed the outcome was the fine print she'd signed when she opened the account: any unauthorized trade or statement error had to be flagged within 30 days, or it would count as approved. Since no one raised the alarm about the missing US dollars until the 2024 claim, the court said that clause killed the unauthorized-trading argument - no matter who actually placed the trades.
The negligence and fiduciary-duty claims fell too. Scotia iTRADE is a self-directed, discount brokerage, and its paperwork spells out that it “does not provide personal, client-specific or tailored investment advice.” Justice Loo found the firm simply wasn't on the hook to check whether her trades made sense for her or to walk her through the risks. The claims of conversion and fraud were dismissed for lack of evidence, and the attempt to add The Bank of Nova Scotia as a defendant failed for the same reason. A limitations argument from Scotia Capital never even needed to be addressed. Costs went to Scotia Capital.
The takeaway for wealth firms running self-directed platforms: a well-worded account agreement can do a lot of heavy lifting. A client who waits years to flag a problem - even one who insists she never understood the paperwork she signed - may find she has no case at all once that fine print gets tested in court. For compliance teams, it's a good prompt to double-check that notice periods and advice disclaimers are spelled out clearly from day one.
