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February 25, 2025 - 7:00 PM
A West Kelowna company is on the hook with its former landlord for almost $80,000 over a disagreement about who would spend roughly $3,000 fixing a clogged drain.
Premium Granite Works walked away from its commercial premises at the Stevens Road business park in 2020 after deciding the building owner fundamentally breached their lease. A drain at the front of the building hadn’t been doing its job for three years, leaving large pools of water which would freeze in the winter. When it started to damage part of the building and created hazards, Premium’s insurance company canceled their insurance until it was fixed.
The question for BC Supreme Court Justice Steven Wilson was not just who was responsible for repairing the clogged drain but whether the lease survived the dispute.
The judge found the landlord, a numbered BC company, should have fixed the problem and that it was a simple enough problem to fix.
"The total cost of repairing the drain, which included digging up and replacing a portion of it, was approximately $3,000. Not an insignificant sum, but not an insurmountable hurdle either, well under half a month’s rent,” he wrote.
The company abruptly left when it should have given the landlord an opportunity to fix it, Wilson said.
The landlord sued for $130,000 in damages, including unpaid rent and to offset lower rent to a new tenant, but Wilson dismissed some damages and returned a $10,000 damage deposit to the granite company, leaving almost $79,000 owed, plus court costs — a big sum for one broken pipe and a lack of communication.
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