Semayne's Case, (1604) 77 E.R. 194

Your Home is Your Castle

So they say...

Semayne's Case, (1604) 77 E.R. 194 - Resolved that the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose;

Merrium-Webster definition of castle is a retreat safe against intrusion or invasion (our home has been invaded by floods, mould, and trespass for over 10 years). Wikipedia says repose is a word meaning "rest" or "calmness" (which the strata has deprived us of for over 10 years).

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If buildings that collapsed from the 2010 earthquake in Chile are being treated as crime scenes due to the death toll I am afraid that the city, the strata, and certain owners may be recklessly threatening innocent lives.

The City of Coquitlam can claim that repeatedly sinking buildings on the slope can't sink, members of the strata council can try to offload responsibility for foreseeable damage from removal of trees and walls with proven to be useless indemnity agreements, and Councillor Mae Reid can sell a view as more of the few remaining trees are destroyed while the concrete pillar supporting the building we shared with her remains defective = but the law of cause and effect is inescapable - as is the risk.

Sunridge Estates has a history of repeatedly sinking. If the most likely causes are soft soil and weak concrete, I think the strata ignoring structural defects in spacious garages and allowing walls to ne  tampered with to add more open concepts unreasonably increase foreseeable risk.

 

 

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We bought a brand new home, we never damaged it, it was in perfect condition before it was flooded by others, we paid strata fees for insurance benefits we were deprived of while the strata delayed with false claims that repairs would be completed with the building envelope.

Our lives have been in limbo since 2003, oppression has escalated for over a decade, and since the flood the only way we could sell our home would be as a "fixer upper" because we morally opposed to cover ups and are unwilling to assume liability for creating hidden defects or the strata offloading its responsibilities.

As of January 2014, NW2671 has not completed repairs of water damage that changed the condition of Unit 409's floors, ceilings, walls, and doors after Unit 510's Crane toilet tank burst and flooded both units in 2003. From what we have been able to gather either the strata did not have insurance on the date of loss, July 23, 2003, or the underlying geotechnical history and structural defects evident in the supporting pillar in the common property garage below our strata lot created enough fear to prevent completion of the repairs.

The strata corporation has left the most expensive repairs incomplete for over 10 years, leaving Unit 409 damaged and crooked, with cracked walls, splitting wood, warped doors, sinking floors and ceilings, and occasional whiffs of mold.

When 510's toilet tank burst nobody was home in either unit. I was out of town visiting my mother in Penticton and we don't know how long the water had been running when my husband came home and reported the flood to the strata management company.

This was a major flood involving 2 units, and in Unit 409 the water came down on us from above. The flood extended from our ensuite to our living room, soaking 3 floor levels, 2 ceiling levels, and all of the floor coverings, framing, drywall, and doors in between ending in a pool of water in our garage and over a decade of unrepaired damage and withheld insurance documents.



After the flood structural changes in Unit 409 included warped doors, sinking floors and ceilings, crooked and cracked walls, none of which damage there was any evidence of before the flood. 
 

We didn't have a digital camera at the time of loss, so I have posted illustrative facsimiles from the internet followed by photos  that I took years later of the actual damage that remains unrepaired 10 years later.

A noticeable difference between my hearing and my husband's makes me believe my hearing was damaged by the loud constant pounding of industrial air movers 24 hours a day, especially after nearly a week of it.

The noise was deafening. My husband was able to get away from it when he went to work, but I had no job to escape to, and no relief from noise so loud it was painful.

Never having experienced a flood before we didn't know where the smell of mould was coming from for years. We finally discovered that the contents in our storage closets had been soaked also. We still smell whiffs of mold when we come in from the garage but have not found the source.

The bottoms of our doors were cut so they could close until they were replaced, so we were told, but then they were never replaced. It took months just for superficial cosmetic repairs, and we have been waiting 10 years for the repairs to our warped doors and sinking floors, which the strata manager referred to as "structural damage" to be completed later, so we were told.

Our home was torn apart for months for just partial repairs, and the strata told us that the outstanding repairs of the "structural damage" to our strata lot would be completed when the construction workers were on site for the building envelope project.

When the time came the repairs to our strata lot were not completed. The strata switched from catastrophizing the damage to trivializing it and started claiming the responsibility for repairs is ours. Whether trivial or catastrophic, whether water damage or structural, the law says the responsibility to repair the damage to our strata lot rests with the strata. It is not ours, and neither is the responsibility for years of delay.

Since then its been a stalemate, leaving us in limbo for over 10 years.

Notwithstanding anything that the law says, most court judgments find ways to defer to strata corporations, and this fact, along with the prohibitive costs for legal fees make it fairly clear for all to see that in reality very few individual owners are likely to have the means to access justice. This has quite naturally spawned generally accepted practices through the strata agency industry and other professions that are inconsistent with the word of law. We find this alarming and believe that this kind of systemic corruption brings the administration of law into disrepute.

We paid strata fees and relied on law for benefits not received. This flood changed our history from 15 years with no unresolved problems in our strata lot to over 10 years of expensive damage, oppression and chronic stress.

The strata left our place in a mess. Two years later, the building envelope project was complete, but the flood repairs to Unit 409 were not. Ten years later we are still waiting despite the fact that the strata's engineer wrote a report confirming that the damage to our strata lot is consistent with water damage.

I have complained constantly and endlessly about the damage to our strata lot. For years I requested copies of strata records which I was persistently denied access to, most particularly concerning water damage, common property, correspondence, finance, and most importantly, the insurance policy.

No insurance investigator attended at the time of loss, the strata has persistently refused to provide a copy of the insurance, the carriers and deductibles for water damage changed from $1,000 to $5,000 on an unknown date during 2003, a $26,000 claim for a less extensive flood from a broken toilet tank in another unit was made less than 2 weeks later, and our comparatively bizarre repair experience in Unit 409 makes us wonder if the strata might not have been insured on July 23, 2003.

Even though the amount of the deductible on the exact date of loss is still an unsolved mystery due to the strata insurance being in a state of flux at the time, the persistent failure to provide us with access to requested strata records and insurance policies, and the strata management company inexplicably quitting after 15 years, the cost of replacement value repairs to 510 and 409 would clearly exceed either of the known deductibles for the beginning, or the end, of that year.

When an insured loss one strata lot is the responsibility of the owner of another strata lot, the strata corporation could seek to recover the deductible from the responsible owner. In this case, the responsible owner was also the person in charge of the strata's insurance.

We paid strata fees to insure in good faith, and the strata's failure to file an insurance claim or even to have an insurance investigator or member of council examine the damage at the time of loss does not to my knowledge relieve the strata corporation of it's obligation to complete the repairs to our strata lot that it started in 2003. So long as the damage exists the strata has an ongoing obligation to repair under our bylaws also, but it persistently fails to do so.

We have more than one problem with that:

1. First, we paid strata fees to insure the fixtures in our strata lot for water damage and the strata failed to make a claim; the same way that we paid for a warranty to cover defects in material, labour, and design and the strata failed to make a claim when the pipes to our taps were not extended to accommodate the rain screen assembly.
2. Second, the strata started the repairs and told us we had to wait for them to be completed, imposed contrived delays and then effectively reneged.
3. Third, the strata's argument that responsibility for repairing the damage is now ours is bogus:
1. we did not in any way cause or contribute to the damage;
2. the cost to repair water damage from a less extensive flood in Unit 227 was about $26,000;
3. our bylaws say it is the strata's duty to not only insure the fixtures, but also to repair the structure of our strata lot and the fences and railings around our patio;
4. the cost to repair the structure of Unit 407 next door to us was about $27,000;
5. as an average owner we understand the structure of a strata lot to mean floors, ceilings, walls, doors, framing and cladding, inside and out; 
6. the Interpretation Act and plain language prevail over the strata's claim that the meaning of structure is restricted to serious and immediate dangers from an engineering or load bearing perspective;
7. hiding structural damage under large quantities of flooring compound is a health hazard;
8. proof that contradictory opinions of the construction and engineering industries lack credibility lies in the leaky condo crisis, disciplinary actions for professional misconduct,  and that it has been impossible to screw our hose onto our taps since repairs in 2005; 
9. the strata has repeatedly provided repairs to other units of less extensive or expressly excluded damage;
10. the strata has a history of significantly unfair responses to our complaints.

The fundamental issue may not be just avoiding responsibility for covering up structural damage and turning it into hidden defects; the most basic fundamental issue seems to be misrepresentations and nondisclosure of inconvenient truths that allow the strata corporation to covertly transfer its rightful obligations onto individual owners, and in this case the innocent victim rather than negligent parties. We hate to think about foreseeable consequences of the unrepaired damage in an earthquake or fire, whether the damage arose out of flooding, settlement, or faulty construction. In any event, the actual and known consequences to us are significantly unfair.

The replacement value repairs that we paid strata fees for were provided to the Pedersen's in unit 227 for their own negligence instead of properly repairing the more extensive damage to 409 caused by the negligence of others.

Pedersen's toilet tank in 227 burst a few days after 510 flooded 409, and the strata promptly provided replacement value repairs to Pedersen's, although the damage to 227 was contained within their own unit and was not nearly as extensive as the damage to 409 coming from the unit above.

Comparing the quantum of damages -  1) the broken toilet tank in 227 flooded one unit only, while the flood in 510 flooded two units, 2) the flood in 227 was from water flowing down to below while the flood in 409 came from water flowing into our strata lot from above, all through our ceilings and down through our walls and doors and floors to the garage two floors below for nobody knows how long, and 3) it took a matter of days to complete replacement repairs in 227 and a matter of months just for cosmetic repairs in 409. Although Pedersen's flood was treated as a greater emergency than 409's, with all things considered I have to conclude on a balance of probabilities that the damage to 409 was FAR more extensive than the damage to 227.

Comparing liability - the flood in 227 was Pedersen's own fault, while the flood in 409 was 510's fault. 

Eleanor Pedersen personally refused my request to address this issue when she was on council and because of that I posted a chronological summary on this blog in 2008 to ensure that management, council, and owners know the facts.

After the AGM in March 2010, when the strata management quit and warned the strata corporation about Al MacLeod I was finally given an opportunity to review what was left of the strata records after Mr. Macleod had hijacked them in 2006 following one of his routine severances from council.

Material that should have been in the strata records was missing, but one of the things I discovered in the accounting records was an expenditure of over $26,000 for repairs to Pedersen's unit for 2003 water damage. As Pedersen's were warned in advance of risk and it was their own toilet tank in their own unit that burst due to their own negligence, the strata should be reimbursed and 409 should be repaired with that money - unless there is a better remedy with a more reasonable, plausible explanation. 

While 409 pays strata fees we are bypassed for insured repairs to our strata lot, bypassed for an equitable patio extension, bypassed for specified pipe extensions to our taps, and bypassed for repairs to gouged siding around our kitchen window. Meanwhile our strata fees were diverted to pay for an extravagant new fireplace for Al Macleod and replacement value repairs for the Pedersen's for damage they themselves are responsible for. 

If Ms. Pedersen or any other owner, on council or off, honestly thinks that persistently delaying completion of the repairs to 409 is reasonably justified and not significantly unfair please provide an explanation to me and sign your name to it. Since the court says we're "all in this together", if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem - and if you are not proud of the role that you are playing, please do something about it and make a motion to complete the repairs to unit 409 without further delay so your motion and the vote on it are in the minutes.

Pretending there is no problem and ignoring the damage does not make it go away, but it does interfere with our lives, devalues our unit, spoils relationships, and leaves scars. If reporting on the situation perpetuates the stigma and notorious reputation of Sunridge Estates which arose when the common property was destroyed and left looking like a war zone for years, then the strata corporation should do something to make it right.