Updated 30 November 2025
Lawsuit hearing took place in November 2025: The hearing of Westsea’s lawsuit against a handful of remaining Orchard House lessees for refusing to pay the company’s litigation expenses to oppose a lessee took place over eight days in November 2025 at the Victoria courthouse. Supreme court-level Justice Geoffrey Gaul closed by saying that his ruling will come in 2026. The Orchard House lessees (tenants) are represented by Arvay Finlay lawyers David Wu and Emily Chan, whose easy-to-follow submission can be read here (In the submission, “Gray” refers to the St. Pierre lessees in Vancouver, whose case is reported on in the next item). Lessee Hugh Trenchard was self-represented; his submission puts forward additional objections to Westsea’s behaviour, which can be read here.
Two developments regarding lessor (landlord) Westsea Construction’s billed legal expenses are summarized below, followed by background.
Court rules that landlord litigation costs cannot be billed to lessees: A B.C. Supreme Court-level justice ruled 9 September 2025 that lessor (landlord) litigation expenses to oppose some lessee tenants are NOT billable to all of the building’s lessees. Three lessees at the St. Pierre leasehold in Vancouver’s West End had sued their landlord on various questions, with the issue of the landlord billing all the building’s lessees its legal expenses to oppose the few suing becoming the key issue at trial. This ruling supports the position of a few Orchard House lessees who refused in 2018 to pay Westsea’s vast expense to oppose lessee Hugh Trenchard, who had challenged the landlord billing him a share of the building’s re-glazing project.
The justice’s ruling said in part, “…Harwood (the St. Pierre building lessor) had no right under the lease to charge its legal fees in this and related litigation to the tenants as operating expenses. I therefore find Harwood to be in breach of the lease for having done so.” He also noted, “Not only was that cost not incurred in the performance of the landlord’s convenants set out in Article 5, it cannot be seen….to have been incurred prudently and reasonably.” Both sides in the matter have filed notices of appeal, but at the time of writing it’s unclear whether these will proceed.
This ruling is cited by us sued lessees in Victoria. At this time Westsea continues to refuse to disclose ANYthing about its “legal” expenses passed on to its lessees, which at Orchard House amounted to $250,769 in 2024, being just one year’s example.
The Vancouver case has further aspects that will continue to be heard, including possible damages to be levied against the lessor. The ruling is lengthy, so scroll down to paragraph 114.
WS lawyer Mark Stacey faces Legal Professions Act review of non-litigation billings. Update: A justice decided that my 2024 Application under the B.C. Legal Professions Act (“LPA”) should wait until Westsea’s lawsuit against our Orchard House group is decided, which case is referenced above, and is detailed further down on this page. The decision says in part, “…the court must first decide whether the Petition Respondents (we few Orchard House lessees) are responsible for paying the types of legal costs in dispute under the Lease”. Fine; if we don’t pay them at all, ‘no review. If we must pay any portion of them, such as the non-litigation billings, my court application to review my share of landlord’s lawyer Mark Stacey’s ongoing, enormous and unspecified billings will be heard anew. And if I can have the court review his legal bills for reasonableness, so can every other lessee at every Westsea leasehold building.
My lawyer’s submission supporting my right to LPA review of legal billings can be read via the following link, which opens a new browser tab. At para 52 the name “Tenchard” is used, but should be my name, “Rotering”.
Background: In recent years lessees at Westsea Construction-owned buildings have been required to pay enormous sums in unspecified “legal” billings. Beginning in 2016, these billings amount to millions of dollars of a new and unjustified financial burden on lessees already facing rising operating costs and very large capital-project expenses.
Some of these legal billings at Victoria’s Orchard House tower were for the landlord’s full-recovery legal expenses to oppose lessee Hugh Trenchard, who questioned whether he as a tenant lessee should be paying for new windows, which can be read about here. Following the advice of the B.C. Court of Appeal to “hire a lawyer” in the event Westsea billed lessees those legal expenses, a few of us refused to pay that bill in 2018, aiming to obtain a new ruling that the company must not oppose lessees at the lessees’ expense, which we feel denies lessees’ access to justice. That earlier ruling in lessees’ favour that Hugh had obtained in 2016 was put aside on appeal for the technicality that Westsea had not notified all of the building’s lessees of its request to the court for approval to bill them. The we-won’t-pay case against us is finally scheduled to be heard beginning on 17 November 2025 (seven years later!).
The lawsuit against us was narrowed in focus in 2023 when non-litigation legal billings were dropped from it. This opened the possibility of asking for review of them under the B.C. Legal Professions Act (“LPA”), which as a consumer-protection measure allows those paying a lawyer’s bills to have a Court Registrar review them for reasonableness.
The Act, however, does not anticipate that lessees billed the landlord’s legal expenses receive no “final bill” from the landlord’s lawyer, nor any bill at all other than the demand under threat of lawsuit to pay full annual operating expenses without question. Nor does the LPA have provision for an application on behalf of a group, such as all Orchard House lessees, much less all Westsea lessees. Further, anyone asking for an LPA review of the legal bills they paid as part of operating expenses would surely face opposition from the lawyer in question, Mark Stacey, and need to personally retain a lawyer to counter him. I wrote the B.C. Attorney General early in 2024 about these conundrums, but received a fob-off reply; rather than a note saying ‘we see the problem that lessees face with the Legal Professions Act, and will consider how to address it’.
Seeing no alternative to stem these outrageous billings, I made an LPA application on my own behalf early in 2024, then hired lawyer David Wu of law firm Arvay Finlay to represent it. As expected, Mr. Stacey appeared to protest, then filed an application to dismiss my effort. After months of delay a one-day court session was held 18 December 2024 in Victoria to hear both sides. A ruling could take some time to be issued.
If the courts dismiss Mr. Stacey’s objections and uphold my statutory right to have reviewed by a court Registrar or judge the non-litigation legal bills that I reimbursed to my landlord as operating expenses, all other Westsea lessees will know that they can also apply for review of what they have paid. A more efficient alternative would be a class-action application, but I have yet to explore whether that’s possible. Mr. Wu’s easy-to-read written submission on my behalf can be be found here . References to “the Law Firm” are to Mr. Stacey’s law firm, while I am “the Client”.
Now back to the lawsuit against us who refused to pay litigation billings. Readers are likely aware that the well-known B.C. law firm of Arvay Finlay is representing the eight remaining Orchard House lessees who declined to pay their shares of about $1.3 million in landlord litigation expenses billed to and largely paid by leases for 2017, 2018 and 2019. After the group hired Arvay Finlay in 2024 to prepare an analysis of the Petition lawsuit (18-4015), the firm offered a reduced rate to represent the lessee respondents through the suit’s hearing and judgement, which we very much appreciate. Arvay Finlay’s David Wu is our representative, and he also represents my Legal Professions Act application for court review of Westsea lawyer Mark Stacey’s non-litigation billings. Mr. Wu is assisted by lawyer Emily Chan.
As mentioned above, hearing of the Petition lawsuit is finally scheduled to begin 17 November 2025 before B.C. Supreme Court-level Justice Geoffrey R.J. Gaul, who has 35 years experience on the bench. Self-represented respondent lessee Hugh Trenchard will continue to speak for himself.
In review, and then expanding on the above, in April of 2023 the focus of the suit was narrowed; the parties agreed that the lawsuit will only address the $1.3 million in litigation expenses billed to and collected from lessees by landlord Westsea to oppose lessee Hugh Trenchard, who had asked the courts to rule that he as a lessee (tenant) should not pay for new glazing in his landlord’s building. Lessees had paid more than $6 million for the second phase of that project, of which Trenchard’s share was about $35,000. The suit by Trenchard over which side pays for glazing was eventually decided in favour of lessor Westsea.
In court, Westsea’s lawyer told the remaining sued lessees (confirmed hours later in writing) that they no longer owe the previously-claimed other, non-Trenchard-litigation legal billings. It appears, though, that Westsea and its lawyer have reneged on this agreement, so we’ll see about that. Regardless, the suit’s focus now is specifically whether the company can bill its lessee tenants its unlimited legal expenses to oppose any lessee who might sue the landlord on a question of lease interpretation, which we feel denies lessees access to justice.
Recall that there is no class-action suit; no other O.H. lessees who paid those years’ litigation expenses (and the non-litigation legal costs of $100,000+ per year no longer at issue in the suit) who did not file a claim to recover them (one lessee did via the B.C. Resolution Tribunal, limited to $5,000) cannot do so now, as more than two years have passed. Of course, an eventual court ruling that the lease does not allow at all, or that limits what we were billed for the landlord’s litigation expenses to oppose Trenchard, will set a precedent that protects all lessees in the future, even at other leasehold buildings, which is what we who are sued set out to accomplish in 2018 by refusing to pay.
While Westsea sacrificed some lessees’ debt by waiving its non-litigation billings to the lessees it sued, this development means that the company remains unchallenged (other than via my LPA application) in billing lessees under the heading “legal” for services that appear to be management functions that Westsea previously performed in-house at one-tenth the cost. The provincial Ministry of Housing is aware of this issue, which was noted in the spring public consultation about leasehold issues. The provincial government has yet to act, but Minister of Housing Kahlon and MLA Spencer Chandra-Herbert (now Minister of Tourism) assure us that we have their attention.
A note: Our precedent will affect others/you: This lawsuit is important to lessees in at least nine other Lower Mainland leasehold buildings governed by the exact same lease as Orchard House. The B.C. Court of Appeal said, “It is reasonable in these circumstances to characterize this Lease as a standard form agreement. The interpretation of the Lease will have precedential value for the holders of substantially identical leases.” In other words, whatever prohibition or limitation on Westsea’s legal billings we accomplish in this suit will apply as a binding legal precedent to the following buildings in Vancouver and Richmond with the exact-same lease: Westsea Towers, The Chelsea, The Heritage, The Horizon, The Martinique, The St. Pierre, The Surfcrest, The Royal (now called Crestwind) and The Imperial (now called Blue Haven). Further, numerous other leasehold developments in Vancouver and Victoria have virtually the same lease, so lessees there (such as the very large Sun Creek Estates in Whalley, Surrey) will obtain similar “precedential value” from our fight. Even leasehold buildings with only similar leases will likely see our precedent apply to them, such as these Victoria buildings: Villa Royale, El Mirador, Ocean Villa and Edgemont Villa.
Understanding the issue and background: Lessees of nine Orchard House suites continue during 2024 to face landlord Westsea Construction’s Petition lawsuit (18-4015) because we do not believe that the lease allows the company to bill all lessees, who are tenants, its unlimited legal expenses to oppose litigation initiated by any lessee. That’s right, the landlord believes and demands that if/when any lessee sues it—no matter how legitimate an issue the lessee may raise—you and your neighbours must pay its unrestrained expenses to oppose that lessee.
The landlord’s position also means that if we had a gadfly lessee suing repeatedly on frivolous issues and losing, all of us lessees would have to cover the landlord’s full expenses every time, rather than letting the courts impose the disincentive court-tariff costs on the losing frivolous lessee.
The company further asserts that no lessee has the right to question the reasonableness of billings, nor has the right to any disclosure about the details of its legal billings to us, although in this lawsuit a judge twice ordered Westsea to do so. The company claims that it exercises the lease-required “prudent and reasonable discretion” incurring such expenses, but while refusing to provide lessees with any information so we may know that our money is being spent with discretion on things that are reasonable, which should mean that the spending benefits us in some way.
Beyond legal expenses, Westsea refuses to answer even the most basic questions about the recent years’ dramatically increased costs incurred to run a simple long-term lease rental building. Read about the company’s refusal to disclose despite very specific questions on this website’s page titled $ disclosure refused by Westsea .
The lawsuit filed against us in October of 2018 is about expenses the company identifies only as “legal”, which line item appeared for the first time on the annual one-page Orchard House spending report for 2016, and which we first refused to pay in mid-2018.
Although the lease mentions legal costs as a possible building operating expense, is litigation to interpret the muddled lease an expense to actually operate the building? The first justice who considered this thought not, but that ruling was put aside “in part” by the B.C. Court of Appeal on the technicality that Westsea had not notified all Orchard House lessees that it would ask the courts for approval to do so. The 2016 ruling by Mr. Justice B.D. MacKenzie can be read here:
These billings to lessees include the company’s extravagant expenses to defend against lessee Hugh Trenchard’s suit that challenged the company billing him (a tenant, remember) for replacement windows, but other legal expenses in each of those four years’ billings were well over $100,000. Court-ordered disclosures show that much of the lawyers’ work appears to be more administrative than legal. Somehow Orchard House functioned for many years with no such expense, so what changed? Note that as of April, 2023, those non-litigation billings are no longer part of this action, and those sued by Westsea have been told they no longer owe that debt.
Year-end statements show no Orchard House “legal” expenses at all until they began in 2016, and what bills they are!
2016: $6,980, 2017: $426,337, 2018: $453,771, 2019: $659,525, 2020: $341,244, 2021: $147,704, 2022: $224,743 and 2023: $292,443, for a total to-date of $2,552,747 !
An affidavit from me regarding the legal billings was submitted in this suit, which can be read here (four pages of statement, 62 of supporting material):
An affidavit from lessee Martine Goddard documents that landlord Westsea repeatedly did not reply when she asked in writing whether “legal” costs billed to lessees included expenses to defend against 2014’s suit by Hugh Trenchard asking for disclosure about the then-pending windows-replacement project, which can be read here: https://orchardhouseleaseholder.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/affidavit-1-m.-goddard-22-03-29.pdf
Note that the company told us that its costs in this suit against us for refusing to pay its litigation expense would not be billed to other Orchard House lessees. The company’s lawyer wrote all lessees October 2, 2018 saying, “To be clear, legal expenses incurred by Westsea in relation to this Petition will be sought from defaulting leaseholders, not from any Orchard House leaseholder who does not participate in this Petition”. That letter can be read via the following link, although it appears that WS has changed its mind, and is billing all of us year by year.
Returning to the issue of “legal” cost billings to lessees, we respondents to Westsea’s suit have learned through court-ordered disclosures that the company even billed its tenants the cost of a court application against Mr. Trenchard that the court denied, and for which the company was ordered to pay $2,800 to him. Westsea then appealed that ruling but later abandoned the effort, yet billed Orchard House tenants its expenses. Mr. Trenchard, being a lessee, was required to pay his suite’s share of the company’s legal expenses–and it appears even the award to him–in a proceeding he had won!
This situation raised questions of fairness, access to justice and the power imbalance between the lessor and lessees that we ask the court to adjudicate in the suit against us. For example:
*Are the landlord’s litigation expenses truly an “operating expense” for this one building or is litigation to interpret the lease (and thus also nine other exact-same leases) remote and separate from “operating” the building?
*Is it not unconscionable to interpret the lease as allowing the landlord to bill lessees its unlimited expenses to oppose them? If not barred by “unconscionability”, are such landlord’s expenses billed to lessees incurred with “prudent and reasonable discretion” as required by lease clause 7.1? If still allowed, are such expenses not subject to review by the Court Registrar on behalf of the lessees who paid them?
*What tenant would challenge their landlord on even the most legitimate issue if s/he must share the cost of their landlord’s expenses to oppose him or her… and face the opposition of their lessee neighbours for the costs potentially imposed on them? Lawyers call this a “chilling effect” that we argue denies access to justice.
*(As of April, 2023, ‘no longer part of this lawsuit) Are the landlord’s legal expenses apart from litigation, billed to lessees beginning in 2016, necessary to operate the building, or are they actually the cost of administrative functions formerly and properly performed at much lower cost by Westsea staff? (Other Westsea-owned leasehold buildings have seen similar new expenses.)
*Does “privity of contract” not protect lessees from being billed the costs of litigation between any other lessee and the landlord? Head lease clause 10 says that every suite’s lease assignment is a separate lease.
*Are large expenses that did not exist for decades allowed to suddenly appear when the lease says that expenses are to be based on past-years’ experience?
*Is comprehensive disclosure about spending not required so that lessees can know that “prudent and reasonable discretion” was exercised each year by the landlord in spending their money?
*The B.C. Court of Appeal made a finding of fact that the Orchard House lease is a “standard-form agreement”, meaning it recognizes that lessees neither drafted nor negotiated it. If the lease is unclear on any of the points above, we argue that it should be interpreted in favour of those who are not responsible for that lack of clarity.
*Has Westsea not in various ways breached duties to the lessees of transparency, honest conduct and good faith in contractual performance?
The story behind our group’s refusal to pay Westsea’s legal billings began in late 2014 when lessee Hugh Trenchard stopped begging the company for disclosure of then-existing information about the planned major project to replace all of the Orchard House tower windows at lessee/tenant expense. He sued, the company’s lawyer agreed after four days in court to disclose a future engineering report before Supreme Court Justice Brian MacKenzie, settling that issue, but the company also asked the judge to rule that the lease allowed it to bill its full-indemnity expenses in the matter to all lessees.
Early in 2016, Justice MacKenzie ruled that Westsea’s expenses to litigate the request for disclosure were not a building operating cost, so the company could not bill those costs to its lessees. Justice MacKenzie further ruled that even if he thought that the Orchard House lease allowed Westsea to require reimbursement of those litigation expenses by its long-term tenants, he would not have permitted the charge because the company could have avoided the cost of litigation by providing Mr. Trenchard with the reasonable disclosure for which he had asked. That ruling can be read here:
The company assigned its Vancouver team of lawyers to bring that ruling to the B.C. Court of Appeal. In October of 2017 three judges there noted that Westsea wanted to bill all lessees, but that only Mr. Trenchard made the original request for disclosure that Westsea opposed, and that other lessees were not notified of the subsidiary question of whether the company could bill all lessees its expenses in the matter. The Court of Appeal concluded that Westsea “was wrong” to have asked the judge to decide whether it could bill all lessees, that Justice MacKenzie’s decision on that point was therefor premature, set the ruling aside in part, and noted that Westsea “… may yet decide that it should not attempt to charge the leaseholders for the legal fees and expenses related to the (windows-cost) Petition.” That sounded like appeal-court-level guidance that Westsea chose not to follow.
When Westsea’s lawyer told the appeal-court justices it was “inevitable” that the company would proceed to bill lessees its litigation expenses, the lead justice replied that lessees might then be well advised to hire a lawyer. It’s reassuring to read the Court of Appeal judgement, so I’ve scanned a copy that has some underlining by me. You might skip the quoted precedents, which are beyond us non-lawyers: Appeal Court re WS legal billing . Note that at para 12 the appeal judgement said that if Westsea chooses to raise the issue again it should identify the specific litigation costs it claims the lease allows it to bill to lessees; “It is only by proceeding in the manner described (providing a statement of the legal fees and expenses to the leaseholders setting out its claim under the clause) that the issue would properly be raised before all of the interested parties: all of Orchard House’s 210 leaseholders.”
During this period Westsea proceeded to contract for replacement of all Orchard House windows and to bill its lessees about $6 million. Lessee Trenchard felt that he had pre-paid his rent, and that as a long-term tenant he should not be billed for new windows for a suite he did not own; further, that windows replacement was a capital expense not captured by the lease, and also that the tenant’s wear-and-tear exception in the lease to each lessee’s duty to maintain their suite made him not liable to replace worn-out windows. Thus, in 2016, he sued anew, this time to recover about $35,000 he had paid for the new windows, balcony slider doors and upgraded bathroom ventilation. (We’ll nickname all of this “windows”.)
Some of us lessees had agreed with Mr. Trenchard that we are tenants who should not be paying for replacement windows for the landlord’s building, on which point we feel that the lease is ambiguous, as it speaks to tenants paying for “window washing”, but is silent on window replacement. Other lessees believed that because all tenants will have use of new windows for the next 30 years, it’s reasonable that we pay for them. These opinions are beside the point regarding other lessees than Mr. Trenchard being required to pay the landlord’s litigation expenses in the matter; the lawsuit was between them, while each of our lease assignments are separate contracts.
It was in January of 2018 that the company warned all Orchard House lessees that we would be required to pay the firm’s litigation expenses to oppose lessee Hugh Trenchard’s suit regarding the cost of replacement windows. That letter can be read here: Pay or we sue . Note that the letter also said that litigation expenses would be separated from legal costs directly connected to the remediation work and “ongoing leaseholder and/or tenant issues”. But no separated information was ever provided despite our demands, so lessees would not have the option to decline to pay specifically the landlord’s litigation expenses if we thought that other legal billings to us were reasonable.
The civil trial regarding the windows-replacement expense took place in June, 2019; Madam Justice Karen Douglas ruled for Westsea, which decision was upheld in May 2020 by the B.C. Court of Appeal. The appeals court did, however, allow Mr. Trenchard to introduce new evidence, being nine other cookie-cutter leases, and the court made a finding of fact that the Orchard House lease is a standard-form contract. Read the windows replacement-cost story on this site’s page Lessees pay for windows
In a front-page story in June of 2020 the Times-Colonist reported on the B.C. Court of Appeal upholding the lower-court ruling that the lease does allow Westsea to bill replacement of its building’s windows to the lessee tenants. The story then turns to the company’s litigation expenses in that matter also being billed to the lessees. The story has a few errors, such as use of the word “condo” (‘different animal) and the misunderstanding that we own our suites; the news report can be read here: T-C reports BCCA decision .
While the windows-replacement-cost question was in the courts in 2018 all lessees received the first very substantial Orchard House past-year (2017) “shortfall” bill for $551,954, of which $426,337 was Westsea’s legal and litigation expenses attributed to 2017. There was no disclosure so that we or Mr. Trenchard could tell whether some of these costs were from as early as 2014. In May of 2019 we were billed a second past-year (2018) “shortfall”, this time of $495,690, of which $453,771 was the company’s legal and litigation expenses. As well, suite fees increased 38% for 2018 and about 25% more for 2019, some portion of which was to cover the landlord’s litigation expenses.
In a letter dated 19 October 2020 we finally received the company’s statement of Orchard House operations for the previous year, 2019, and were told to pay a “deficit” of $209,402. The one-page spending sheet shows that the company spent fully $659,525 of lessees’ money on “legal” costs that year. In 2021 we learned that 2020 legal spending was $341,244. The legal billings for 2017 through 2020 total an astounding $1.9 million. By blending all “legal” costs under that one-word heading Westsea made it impossible for lessees to decline to pay any specific expense, such as for litigation with a lessee, regardless of the B.C. Court of Appeal guidance noted above.
Some of us lessees had to decide in 2018 whether to pay the first of these bills and then sue Westsea for recovery, or refuse to pay and let Westsea sue us; we chose the latter because that’s what the B.C. Court of Appeal had suggested. On that, here is my letter to Westsea of 14 July 2018: Ltr to WS re not paying legal costs .
Of course, among others, Mr. Trenchard refused to pay, and wrote the company a very clear letter that you can read here: July 16 2018 letter to WS re refusal to pay litigation costs . He also applied to the courts for an injunction, as these crushing costs on top of the windows-replacement charges were forcing some lessees out of their modest apartment homes. He also questioned whether the courts would allow such costs to be billed to lessees in advance of a court ruling whether it could bill them at all. In support of that application 30 Orchard House lessees provided affidavits documenting the financial and emotional impacts of Westsea’s litigation-expenses billings. However, facing court delays making a possible injunction too late to matter, Trenchard stopped that effort. Although never presented in court, the injunction application addresses these issues, so it’s available here: June 29 2018 Application for injunction .
In October of 2018 Westsea’s “petition action” lawsuit for us not having paid its litigation expenses was served on 22 suite lessees. The company amended the Petition in June of 2021, which final version can be read here:
The failure by some lessees to pay was inadvertent while a few others naturally feared losing their suite, so some of the 22 were excused from the lawsuit in exchange for a demanded fee of $2,000 each to the company for its costs to pursue them, plus the missed “deficit” payments. Brave lessees of 13 suites each put up cash to jointly hire a lawyer, while Mr. Trenchard is self-represented. Our lawyer-prepared and updated (4 April 2023) “Response” to Westsea’s legal action can be read here, with new content underlined and deleted content struck through. The deleted material addressed the non-litigation legal billings of 2017, ’18 and ’19 that Westsea no longer claims from us.
Mr. Trenchard’s arguments go beyond what our lawyer put forward, so his updated Response as amended and filed in March of 2022 is here. Not posted is the lengthy accompanying affidavit, which swears to background facts and provides the court the extensive “legal” spending disclosures it ordered be made by Westsea and its lawyer.
Two of our group have died since this started in 2018, one has gone to nursing care, and two other lessees faced unbearable financial pressure, so bought their way out, although likely at a cost far higher than $2,000, but which price they are not permitted to disclose. The few suite lessees who remain are committed to the legal process to have this question finally decided.
Orchard House lessees who are not involved in this action—and lessees in other leasehold buildings in Victoria and the Lower Mainland—likely understand that the pending interpretation by the court of the lease on this is also vital for them. If the courts rule entirely or largely in our favour, then Westsea Construction and even other leasehold landlords will be prohibited by precedent from billing lessees their expenses to oppose lessees in litigation. Perhaps you’ll help us with our legal costs via our GoFundMe page
Some history: Madam Justice J. Power was initially assigned to manage our case planning and to be the Hearing judge (a Petition suit has a “hearing”, as opposed to a “trial”, as it involves affidavits but no witnesses or cross examination).
At an initial case-planning conference in September of 2019 at the Victoria courthouse Justice Power decided that to avoid overlapping issues our matter should only proceed after the Court of Appeal ruling on Mr. Trenchard’s suit regarding the expense to replace windows. With that case decided in 2020 our case could proceed.
In a second case-planning conference held by telephone in April of 2021 Justice Power expressed concern for the stress and costs imposed on the sued lessees by this drawn-out process. She ordered Westsea and its lawyers to disclose to the sued lessees information about its billings, and further ordered that Westsea make an offer to settle to all lessee respondents to the suit. The offer to settle was accepted (at a cost that may not be disclosed under court rules) by the family of one person who can no longer live on their own; 10 of us remain.
Westsea claimed that solicitor-client privilege protects it from having to disclose to lessees or to the court more than bare-bones information about its billings. Westsea asked for a two-day hearing to argue its position on this, but no such hearing has been ordered. We respondents naturally wanted to know why we were billed hundreds of thousand dollars of other “legal” expenses over those years, stemming from a simple leasehold/rental building that for decades had no such expenses.
A third case-planning session took place in June of 2021, at which Justice Power ordered Westsea’s lawyers to provide more detailed disclosure to the sued lessees about the company’s legal-cost billings. In October of 2021 Mr. Justice Geoffrey Gaul was assigned to take over from Madam Justice Power, so he held a telephone case-planning conference (#4) with the parties and ordered that final submissions be made by the end of March, 2022. An interim hearing was set for April of 2023 on the application by Westsea to dismiss some respondent arguments, which brings us to today.
Note again that Westsea’s costs in this Petition action against us are not being billed to other lessees, as the lease allows it to recover these expenses from those it sued (if it wins the case). This is different from our cause, which is to prevent the company billing you, us, and all lessees when a lessee sues it.
A side note: Among all other Orchard House lessees not sued by Westsea on this issue, one took another route. Our neighbour lessee Kathleen Walker paid Westsea’s litigation-expenses billings and then filed a claim in June of 2020 for recovery of a debt via the Civil Resolution Tribunal, which can be read here: Kay’s CRT filing . It’s a place-holder claim that may well be settled on the same basis as the eventual ruling at the superior-court level. Although Westsea’s lawyer argued that the CRT has no jurisdiction and that her claim should be rejected, the CRT has decided it will hold her claim in abeyance until higher courts rule.
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