Суд обязал управляющую компанию в Верноне выплатить владельцам квартиры 45 тысяч долларов за дискриминацию при ремонте

Vernon strata ordered to pay $45K to owners who were ‘singled out’ over patio planters Published 5:30 am Friday, September 4, 2026 A Calgary couple that spends their summers in their Okanagan Landing condo have won a decade-long battle with their Vernon strata, which has been ordered to pay them close to $45,000 over their rooftop patio planters. It marks the end of an “expensive” legal saga that B.C. Supreme Court Justice Briana Hardwick said involved a “series of acrimonious disputes, costly repairs, allegations of misconduct and unilateral acts by both sides” in her recently published July 22 decision. The court case was launched by Richard and Leslie Chisholm, whose primary residence is in Calgary but who have spent time in Vernon since buying a unit on the top floor of the brand-new Strand condo complex in 2008. The unit had a rooftop patio with large, irrigated outdoor planters, which the Chisholms said was a significant factor in their decision to purchase the unit, as Leslie was an avid gardener. However, a couple years after their condo purchase, some strata owners started to report leaks in their ceilings. By 2015 it was clear that these leaks were due to a systemic issue that required a major fix. In 2013, the strata ended up shutting off the rooftop irrigation system, including to the Chisholms’ patio, as a partial solution until the roof leak issues were resolved. The Chisholms were not made aware of this decision in advance, and their plants died while they were in Calgary. Richard lobbied to have the irrigation system turned back on to their unit at a 2014 strata meeting, to no avail. Due to unilateral actions on the part of both the strata and the Chisholms, the judge said the irrigation system to the unit wound up being turned off for about a decade. In 2015, the couple took matters into their own hands and installed a watering system on the patio without knowledge or approval from the strata, which drew disapproval from the judge. “This type of self-help conduct is very unhelpful in a strata living situation and is not encouraged,” Hardwick wrote in her decision. The strata removed the Chisholms’ unauthorized planters without notice in 2016, and the Chisholms alleged that workers had trespassed on their unit in the process, pointing to evidence from their then rental manager who observed dirty boot prints in their unit. The strata had to deal with the leaking roof for years. It ended up replacing the irrigation system along with every planter except the Chisholms by 2019. The Chisholms ended up buying their own planters after deciding the replacement planters offered by the strata were unsuitable, and notably smaller than the ones offered to other strata unit owners. The irrigation system to the Chisholms’ planters was finally turned on in the summer of 2023. The Chisholms argued they’d been treated unfairly by the strata, and Justice Hardwick said that was in fact the case at various points in the saga. Hardwick ruled that many of the strata’s actions were reasonable, but not all of them were, saying the strata “singled out” the Chisholms in a number of ways. One instance of singling out occurred when the strata “inexplicably” initially offered one kind of replacement planter to every rooftop patio owner except the Chisholms. It also refused to let the Chisholms use the crane they had rented to move their planters to their patio, and required the couple to sign an indemnity agreement regarding rooftop planters well before making that a requirement for other rooftop owners. And, very significantly said the judge, the strata didn’t turn on the irrigation to the Chisholms’ planters until four years after it did so on all of the other rooftop patios. Neither side appeared to handle the dispute particularly well. “It is abundantly clear to me that over the time that the Chisholms owned the unit, acrimony and personal grudges have seeped into their dealings with various iterations of the strata council,” Hardwick wrote. “The Chisholms are also appropriately described, I find, as sensitive and sometimes prone to hyperbole in describing the subjective impact of some of the interactions that have arisen as a result of this dispute.” That said, animosity and heightened emotions don’t remove the strata’s obligation to act fairly and reasonably, the judge ruled. “The Chisholms lost the use of their rooftop planters, something I accept was objectively significant to the enjoyment of the unit, for over 10 years including, very importantly, for over four years after their neighbours had irrigation restored.” The Justice ordered the strata to pay the couple $16,800 to cover the cost of the planters as well as $28,000 in damages to account for the four years they didn’t have planters while their neighbours did. Hardwick added there was not enough evidence to prove that the strata had trespassed on the couple’s unit when it removed their planters in 2016.