When the bills went unpaid, Versatile filed a notice of civil claim on October 29, 2025, alleging the company breached the contract by failing to pay. The next day it obtained its first pre-judgment garnishing order, followed by a second on December 3 and one against Zhang personally.
Garnishment is an aggressive tool. It lets a plaintiff freeze money before trial, and courts treat it as an extraordinary remedy available only when the amount claimed is a “liquidated sum” – a figure fixed by the contract rather than left to a judge to estimate.
That distinction was the heart of the fight. The defendants argued the debt was not liquidated because, they alleged, Versatile failed to perform parts of the contract and wrongly held back motion-capture and scanning work they called “withheld assets.” On their reading, the unfinished work made the amount uncertain and the garnishment improper.
Justice Sharma disagreed. She found the sum tied directly to the agreement’s pricing schedule, which made it ascertainable and liquidated regardless of the parties’ separate dispute over performance. A contractual fight about whether the work was done, she reasoned, does not change the nature of the repayment terms.
The court also noted that the production company never disputed the invoices or raised concerns about withheld assets until after litigation began, and had repeatedly assured Versatile it would pay in full.
