B.C. man lied about cancer diagnosis while dodging $330K debt, court hears

Anthony Celani told an Alberta court he was lied to about his brother suffering from brain cancer. (Illustration by CTV News)

A construction contractor from B.C.’s Lower Mainland has been ordered to repay a $330,000 loan from a friend who gave him leeway for years, despite her own financial suffering – all because she was under the false impression he had brain cancer.

Linda Elser told B.C. Supreme Court she once met her friend Jawaid Celani in summer 2020, months after being told he was battling the deadly disease, and that he arrived totally bald and clean-shaven.

She assumed his appearance was related to punishing, but potentially life-saving treatments.

“She gave him some home-cooked meals and they chatted,” Justice Simon Coval wrote in a Nov. 13 decision, following a summary trial earlier this year. “Mr. Celani told her he was too ill to work, but they did not discuss his illness or his debts to her.”

Only years later did Elser learn he had never been diagnosed with the disease, leading her to finally sue him for repayment.

Before she was privy to that information, the court heard, she watched her finances “crumble” as her husband Tom Schlegel was succumbing to a very real, and terminal, cancer.

Budding friendship, and a series of loans

Elser and Schlegel met Celani in 2006 after hiring him to do some work on their Port Moody home.

The three then became friends, visiting each other for family dinners, and the couple gave Celani a series of small loans over the years that he never failed to pay back, according to the decision.

Then in 2018, Celani asked them for a much larger sum of $330,000 to expand his business, Westcoast Renovations, promising to pay them 20 per cent in annual, non-compounding interest.

The couple agreed.

“Ms. Elser and her husband decided to collapse some of their investments to make the loan and obtain the interest Mr. Celani was offering,” Coval wrote.

Elser, described in the decision as a semi-retired business person, signed a loan agreement with Celani the following year without her husband, who was left out of the arrangement due to his cancer.

Under the terms, Celani was to pay Elser $5,500 in interest monthly, with the principal to be returned in full by June 2022. The court heard he made the payments for three months, up until December 2019, but has not given Elser a penny since.

False cancer claim delivered by brother

According to the decision, Celani told Elser, in a series of text messages in early 2020, that he was short on funds, but would start making interest payments again soon.

That changed in March, when Elser received a phone call from his brother.

The court heard that Anthony Celani told Elser his brother had been diagnosed with brain cancer, which had rendered him unable to continue working in construction.

“Ms. Elser’s evidence is that Anthony asked her not to pursue his brother’s debt while he could not work, and not to contact him directly but communicate through Anthony,” Coval wrote.

During trial, Celani deposed that he was never diagnosed with cancer, but had been undergoing treatment for epileptic seizures he’d been experiencing since 2018, and which he said “adversely affected” his ability to work.

A letter from Celani’s neurologist indicated his seizures were “controlled” with a “combination of medicines” by 2020. Caval also noted there was “much evidence” presented that Celani had actually continued doing construction throughout 2020, 2021 and 2022.

“In his evidence, Mr. Celani refrains from specifically addressing whether he actually told Anthony that he had brain cancer, or whether he asked Anthony to tell Ms. Elser that he did,” the judge wrote.

While Anthony Celani did not provide evidence in the summary trial – a type of proceeding decided on affidavits and other written material – he responded to a separate lawsuit Elser filed over the debt in Alberta, and indicated he had been duped about his brother’s diagnosis.

“He lied about his tumour. He lied about being sick or dying,” he said.

Contractor suggests clock has run out

For his part, Celani tried to argue it was too late for Elser to come after the debt in court. Under the Limitation Act, lenders in these situations must file a claim within two years of a loan coming due.

While their agreement was that the $330,000 principal was payable in June 2022, and Elser filed her claim in August 2023, Celani argued the clock actually should have started ticking when he stopped making payments in January 2020.

The judge did not agree.

“Under the terms of the loan agreement, his failure to make those interest payments did not make the loan due, unless and until Ms. Elser made a declaration to that effect,” Caval wrote.

Celani also argued their agreement had been extinguished through novation – the substitution of one contract for another – because his brother had assumed liability for the debt back in 2020.

Anthony Celani did sign a promissory note agreeing to take responsibility for the loan, but Caval noted all parties must consent for novation, with few exceptions, and there was no evidence Elser had agreed to those terms.

She had only ever promised “she would forbear against Mr. Celani while he was ill and not working, so long as Anthony would agree to also be responsible for paying his brother’s debt,” the judge wrote.

“Communications between her and Anthony indicate their mutual understandings that Mr. Celani was still liable.”

Lender was ‘patient, kind and generous’

The court also heard that, over the years that Elser gave Celani grace, she received little help from his brother.

Caval summed up hundreds of text messages between the two as Elser “repeatedly begging him for money,” while additional emails from the brother indicated he “strung her along, constantly suggesting he was about to pay something and then giving excuse after excuse for why he did not.”

While the judge found there was a “lack of clarity” around whether Celani had lied to either of them about having cancer, there was no question Elser was misled into believing as much, and that is the only reason she had not pursued the debt sooner, as she struggled to pay her bills and went into credit card debt for the first time in decades.

“For years, she was patient, kind and generous towards Mr. Celani,” Coval wrote. “His failure to repay what he owed caused her terrible financial stress while she dealt with the terminal illness of her husband.”

The judge ruled that Celani must pay Elser the full $330,000, plus interest.