School district justified in ending rental after karate instructor charged with child luring, despite stay of charges: court

Scales of justice. (Shutterstock)

The B.C. Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit filed against a school district in the province's Interior that alleged the district had engaged in fraud, collusion, defamation and breach of contract.

Sheldon Scott Hutcheson brought the allegations against the Kootenay-Columbia School District Board of Education after a series of events that took place in April 2017.

At that time, Hutcheson had a rental agreement with the district that allowed him to operate a karate club in the Fruitvale Elementary School gym two nights per week, according to a decision issued last month by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lindsay M. Lyster. 

The decision indicates that the school district terminated the agreement when it learned that Hutcheson had been arrested and released on bail, with conditions that - among other things - he not attend any school or other place frequented by children under the age of 16.

Hutcheson was charged with child luring, possession of child pornography and failure to comply with an appearance, notice or summons, but all of those charges were stayed by Crown counsel, according to the court decision.

The decision indicates Hutcheson did consent to a peace bond for fear of commission of sexual offence. The B.C. government's website describes a peace bond as "a court order used to keep you from committing (or recommitting) a crime," which "requires you to agree to specific conditions to keep the peace." 

In a separate lawsuit brought against the RCMP and the province, Hutcheson alleged that Mounties had pursued charges against him when they shouldn't have and that they had engaged in malicious prosecution and fraud. He sought $10 million in damages.

That lawsuit was dismissed in December 2020, with the judge in that case determining that Hutcheson had provided no factual basis for his claims. The judge also concluded that the claims were "confusing and unintelligible … vexatious, unnecessary and frivolous … embarrassing and an abuse of process."

In the lawsuit against the school district, Hutcheson claimed that there were no reasonable grounds for the termination of his rental agreement because the charges that led to it were stayed.

Lyster rejected this argument, ruling that the breach of contract claim was bound to fail because of the broadly worded termination clause in the school district's facility rental policy.

"The district reserves the right, as its interests may require, to refuse any group or individual access to the facility, or cancel any planned rental or use of a facility at any time," the policy reads, according to Lyster.

The school district said it cancelled the rental agreement because Hutcheson's bail conditions prohibited him from being on school property, and the judge noted that Hutcheson didn't dispute that this was the case.

"Rather, he pleads that the conditions were 'falsely imposed court restrictions' that improperly prohibited him, and only him, from attending school property," Lyster writes in her decision.

"There is no evidence before the court that the conditions prohibiting Mr. Hutcheson from being on school property were 'falsely imposed' by the court," she continues. "Even if they were, that would not be information within the knowledge of the school district. The school district, in its role of protecting the safety of its students, could only act upon the information it was provided, which was that Mr. Hutcheson was under court-ordered restrictions that prohibited him from being on school property."

For similar reasons, Lyster dismissed Hutcheson's allegations that the school district had "defrauded" him out of a refund on his rent payments after the contract was terminated, and that the school district superintendent had "colluded" with the RCMP in order to defame him.

In each case, the justice found that Hutcheson had presented no evidence to suggest that the alleged offence had been committed.

She also rejected Hutcheson's allegation that the superintendent had defamed him in a letter sent to an elementary school notifying parents about his case. Lyster found that Hutcheson had not submitted evidence to prove that the allegedly defamatory words in the letter identified him, since he was not named in the letter, nor in a news story to which the letter linked.

"A person with knowledge of previous articles in other local media sources might have been able to guess that the individual referred to in Mr. Ford’s Letter was Mr. Hutcheson, but there is no evidence before the court of any person doing so in fact," Lyster's decision reads.

In dismissing the case, she ordered Hutcheson to pay the school district $1,000 in costs.