If successful, lawsuit would place federal housing agency on hook for millions
Susan Lazaruk
Province
A class-action lawsuit filed yesterday on behalf of thousands of leaky condo owners named the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. as the sole defendant.
The action, if successful, would put the federal housing agency on the hook for millions of dollars to homeowners who have paid anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000 in repairs to water-damaged building envelopes, according to the suit’s lawyer, John Singleton.
The representative plaintiffs are newly elected Surrey Coun. Linda Hepner and her husband, Alan McMillan, student registrar for the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
McMillan said the couple spent about $65,000 to repair their share of an eight-unit, three-storey wood-frame building they bought new in 1996.
The building has been fully restored and has increased in value because of the real-estate boom, and the couple is happy living there, McMillan said.
“[The increased value] still doesn’t get me my $65,000 back,” he said.
Singleton estimates there are thousands of other affected owners, and anyone who paid to repair stucco “face-seal” cladding on buildings built between 1982 and Dec. 1, 2005, will automatically be included in the suit.
He said internal CMHC documents show the CMHC knew that the design, combined with energy-efficient requirements, caused the damage.
The suit says CMHC “owed a common law duty to the plaintiffs” to pass along that knowledge.
The agency has 14 days to file a defence. The action has to be certified by the courts before it can proceed.
A previous class-action suit naming the CMHC didn’t make it past the certification stage.
The provincial Homeowner Protection Office has paid out $350 million to 11,226 homeowners in 739 buildings for an average of $31,000 in repairs for each unit.
© The Vancouver Province 2005
