Part 53 published on 01/02/16
Parking dispute results in finding of oppression against condominium corporation
This was a dispute between the condominium corporation and an owner, respecting the owner’s right to use a parking space. The owner was in breach of the Declaration in that the owner’s vehicle was not licensed or insured. The owner ultimately removed the vehicle from the property, and then sold her unit and left the building.
In the meantime, the dispute had escalated into a series of accusatory and disrespectful communications between the parties, culminating in the condominium corporation registering liens against the owner’s unit for alleged common expense arrears, legal costs and administration fees.
The Court found that both parties had acted unreasonably. The Court held that the liens registered by the corporation were invalid for the following reasons:
- The liens were not registered within the three-month limitation period in the Condominium Act.
- In the Court’s view, administration fees are improper and a provision purporting to authorize them was “ultra vires the corporation”.
- The Court also said that the corporation had improperly refused to accept payments from the owner (on the grounds that the payments included rent for the parking space, which the corporation felt should not be accepted, because it had cancelled the owner’s parking privileges). The Court said that those amounts could have been received and repaid to the owner.
The Court awarded the owner $1,000 as “nominal damages for oppression”, but otherwise dismissed the owner’s claim for oppression damages.
The Court ordered no costs payable to either party. In its cost endorsement, the Court said:
… I did find that the respondents had acted illegally and oppressively. They enforced liens that were plainly invalid on their faces. They violated their own by-laws by refusing to participate in mediation and arbitration. They repeatedly levied arbitrary administrative fines against the applicant. And they wholly ignored the applicant’s legitimate expectations, and those of all unit holders, that the board and management would comply with the corporation’s internal law and documentation (as well as the law of the land of course).
However, as discussed in my Reasons, the applicant brought much of this upon herself. While she was entitled to expect lawful, neighbourly treatment, she too failed to conduct herself or these proceedings on a reasonable basis. Rather than raising a question fairly for resolution, her first position was to make nasty and uncalled for allegations against the board. She adopted transparent strategies to try to lure the board into accepting rent while letting her common area expenses run into arrears. She let this proceeding sit for a year and then grossly over-reached in her claims. She recovered nothing on damages claims in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Court also noted that the applicant had never responded to the concerns (namely the lack of licensing and insurance) relating to her vehicle. Although the vehicle was removed, the Court noted that the applicant “never came clean on what happened to her car.”