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Relitigation of property standards dispute barred as abuse of process.
A property owner brought a motion to dismiss a municipal appeal concerning a property standards order requiring stairwell guard and handrail modifications.
The moving party argued the matter had already been adjudicated in earlier litigation involving the same property and substantially identical compliance issues.
The court held that strict issue estoppel did not apply because the municipality had amended the relevant by-law after the earlier judgment, creating a technically new legislative framework.
However, the court found that allowing the appeal to proceed would constitute an abuse of process because the factual and evidentiary issues were identical to those previously tried and would result in duplicative litigation and wasted judicial resources.
The motion was granted and the municipality’s appeal was dismissed.
