Article

Small Claims Court Dismisses Claim for Disclosure of Draft Minutes

A unit owner recently brought a condominium corporation to court for the alleged failure of the corporation to disclose records of the corporation pursuant to section 55 of the Condominium Act in Stewart v. Toronto Standard Condominium Corporation No. 1591. In particular, the owner claimed (under section 55) for the following:

  • Production of the minute-taker’s personal notes from the corporation’s AGM;
  • That the AGM minutes were inaccurate and the minute-taker’s draft minutes had been improperly revised by the Board;
  • A penalty of $500.

After a full trial on the matter, the claim was dismissed by the Court. The Court said that “the notes of the note-taker are a work-product and not a record” for the purposes of Section 55. The Court also said that the term “records” does not include “drafts, work in progress, rough copies, et cetera”.

The Court also said that the Board’s minor adjustments to the draft minutes were not improper. The Court added the following; “the minutes are intended to be an accurate summary of the events that took place not a verbatim transcript.”

This case confirms that documents that are considered to be in draft form, or that are otherwise a “work in progress”, do not constitute “records” of the Corporation within the meaning of section 55 of the Act. This would appear to suggest that only once a document is in “final” form does it constitute a “record” of the Corporation. This being said, in our view, it is nonetheless possible that some types of “draft” documents (such as draft reserve fund studies) might be considered to be records of the Corporation. This however, would depend upon the situation.

The Court in this case also took issue with the fact that, “it also became evident that being critical and looking for ways to find the board to be negligent has become a sport for (the owner)”. The Court said that the plaintiff’s requests amounted, in this case, to a “pure fishing expedition, without evidence to support his suspicion of impropriety by the members of the board of revising, to their benefit, the minutes that were taken at the annual general meeting held on June 22nd, 2011”.

The Court awarded costs to the condominium corporation that were higher than the normal costs permitted in Small Claims Court. The Court took particular issue with the plaintiff’s behavior and conduct towards the condominium corporation in the context of the claim and otherwise, and found the following:

“They have the luxury of time to do nothing but find ways to criticize the actions of the board. You know what, instead of criticizing I would have had more respect for the plaintiff if he had taken the initiative and perhaps had become a board member, or come up with solutions on how to better run the board than to stand on the sidelines and do nothing but criticize. So given that, I am going to use my discretion to impose a higher amount than is typically awarded because I do not want this behavior to continue… I think it does interfere with the functioning and the proper running of the board….”

The Court clearly decided to send a message to the plaintiff that further unfounded and unsupported allegations against the board would not be tolerated by the court.