Sarah Turney

The parties are neighbours involved in a property boundary dispute over a strip of land between their houses.

The disputed land consists of a Driveway Area and a Backyard Area, both of which are registered to the applicant's property but have been used by the respondents and their predecessors in title.

The court found that the respondents' predecessors had established a prescriptive easement over the Driveway Area through 20 years of continuous, open, and uninterrupted use prior to the property's conversion to the Land Titles system.

The court also found that the respondents acquired title to the Backyard Area through adverse possession, as their predecessors had exclusively enclosed and occupied the area for the requisite statutory period.

The respondents' counter-application was granted.

Following the dismissal of an application seeking interpretation of a commercial lease concerning the calculation of property taxes, the successful respondent sought partial indemnity costs exceeding $75,000.

The applicant argued the amount was disproportionate to the approximately $160,000 in dispute and the relatively limited complexity of the proceeding.

The court applied the principles governing reasonable expectations of the losing party under the Boucher line of authorities and assessed the reasonableness of the time spent by counsel and the claimed disbursements.

Finding the claimed hours and overall expenditures excessive for an application hearing lasting less than a day, the court reduced the recoverable costs.

The landlord sought a declaration that the tenant’s share of property taxes under a commercial lease should be calculated on a proportionate share basis following the elimination of separate tenant assessments under amendments to the Assessment Act.

The tenant argued that the lease required the parties to determine what a separate assessment would have been using official information from MPAC valuation records.

The court interpreted the lease according to the parties’ intentions at the time of contracting and held that MPAC valuation records constituted sufficient official information to estimate a separate assessment.

Because the lease contemplated this scenario, the tenant’s taxes were properly calculated using the assessed value approach rather than proportionate share.

The landlord’s application for a declaration was dismissed.