and Alan's conduct, the sale had been delayed and at a lesser price than they could have received from a third-party buyer.

He found that Schelew's conduct in obstructing the sale also breached his fiduciary obligations as director of Bram and Jamb and that A.I.

At trial, neither side had referred to the recent case of OBG Ltd v Allan that had been decided in the House of Lords.

Its merits were argued at the Court of Appeal of New Brunswick, which opted to prefer the more narrow reasoning that was expressed by Lord Hoffmann in it for a narrow definition of "unlawful means" whereby only breaches of the civil law such as a tort or breach of contract would suffice.

It did, however, allow for principled exceptions to mitigate the rigidity of the narrow rule and crafted an exception, which covered this case, in the following terms: In my view, the intentional erection of self-help legal barriers, some of which are enforceable through statutory processes not subject to prior judicial authorization, in circumstances where those barriers rest on rights fabricated with arguments of sand, warrants redress under the tort of unlawful means (akin to the tort of abuse of legal process).

[13] The Court also noted that the Civil Code of Quebec[14] goes farther than the common law's unlawful means tort, where liability may be imposed on the defendant for conduct which is otherwise lawful but which is done with the intent to injure the plaintiff or in a manner inconsistent with the social ends of that right.