08/06/2017 – Jurisdiction Ontario
Part 59 published on 01/09/2017
Court determines owner’s rights to see records of the corporation
The Court dealt with a number of disputes between the Plaintiff owner and the condominium corporation respecting the owner’s numerous requests to see records of the corporation.
Many of the plaintiff’s claims were dismissed. Among other things, the Court’s ruling included the following:
- In some cases, the owner’s reason (for asking to see particular records) may be self-evident, or may be reasonably inferred from all of the surrounding circumstances. But in other cases, depending upon the circumstances, the owner can be asked to provide a proper reason, consistent with the purposes of the Condominium Act.
- In this case, the owner did not have a proper reason for many of his requests. In some instances, he appeared only to be on a “fishing expedition”, and in other cases he was not genuinely interested in seeing the records, but rather was interested in pestering the Board. In many cases the requests could also place undue burden upon the corporation (if required to comply with the requests). As a result, the Court held that there were not proper reasons for a number of the owner’s requests.
- Where the owner was entitled to see the records, the condominium corporation would, in some cases, be required to redact the records (for private or confidential information). [This was true for proxies and Board Minutes.] In such cases, the owner would be required to pay a reasonable charge for the redacting (set by the Court in the decision) in addition to paying for copying.
- The owner’s reason for asking to see the Owners List was “to allow communication with the owners concerning matters of our condominium corporation and its operation”. The Court said that this reason is “vague and infringes on the privacy rights of the communal owners”, and rejected this request.
- The Court also rejected the owner’s request to see the corporation’s General Ledgers for a number of reasons including that “the plaintiff’s request would involve a significant burden in time and expense to the defendant which, based on the evidence, is not warranted for any of the requested years”.
- The Court also held that the owner did not have a proper reason to see Accounts Receivable Ledgers, Bank Statements or Portfolio Evaluation Details.
- Some of the owner’s requests for records were also statute-barred (due to expiry of the applicable limitation period).