Maple Ridge man liable after neighbour beaten unconscious, court finds

A Maple Ridge man has been found civilly liable for trespass, assault and battery after a B.C. Supreme Court judge concluded that he and other people beat a neighbour unconscious during a 2019 confrontation.

The trial was heard in New Westminster. Both men agreed the dispute followed an encounter between the resident and the defendant's 12-year-old son on June 22, 2019. The judge found the boy had been in the resident's yard, where garbage had been strewn about, and the resident grabbed the boy's T-shirt and told him not to return.

After the boy told his father he had been assaulted, the father and son drove to the resident's home. Justice Jasmin Ahmad found the father swore at the resident, jumped the fence and entered the yard, where the two began fighting.

The judge found that two or three other people then joined the altercation. They were known to the defendant and had arrived in his SUV, the judge concluded. The group punched and kicked the resident for about five minutes before leaving him on the ground.

The resident later crawled into his kitchen to call his parents. He suffered a concussion, a broken nose, facial cuts requiring stitches and other injuries. Ahmad rejected the defendant's claim that an unknown stranger had inflicted most of the harm, and ruled that any consent to a fight could not extend to an attack by additional people. Damages and legal costs will be determined later.