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Condo owners can throw judicial weight at neighbours from hell

A new high-rise condo tower under construction in downtown Vancouver, October 6, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Bayne Stanley

If you're a homeowner, bad neighbours can make your life a living hell, but often there's little you can do about them. Unless, as it turns out, you live in a condo.

The B.C. Court of Appeal has upheld a lower-court decision ordering Surrey resident Rose Jordison to sell her condominium suite after years of extremely bad behaviour by her son, Jordy.

Jordison had appealed the sale, ordered by B.C. Supreme Court under Strata Property Act provisions, on grounds it violated her property rights.

The Appeal Court ruling upheld the judge's power to force the sale after Jordison and her teenage son ignored warnings and fines levied by the complex's strata council.

"The appellants have repudiated the co-operative foundation of strata living and their intolerable behaviour has brought about the forced sale," the three-judge panel unanimously concluded. "There was ample evidence before the judge that only a sale would resolve the problem."

[ Related: 'Bad neighbour' appeals court order to sell Surrey condo ]

According to The Canadian Press, the Jordisons amassed more than two dozen complaints since moving into the condo development in 2006. Most related to noise, with claims Jordy, who's now 21, stomped around their suite, screamed obscenities at residents, made rude gestures and even spit at them.

Rose Jordison claimed her son's behaviour was due to autism but balked at providing medical evidence to support it, CP said.

The B.C. ruling and a similar 2010 case in Toronto are significant in a landscape where more and more Canadians are living in strata developments.

Condos were once considered the consolation prize of real estate, what you settled for if you couldn't afford to buy a proper home where you owned the land or suite outright.

According to Statistics Canada, only four per cent of households lived in condominiums in 1981. That figure rose to 12.1 per cent in the 2011 National Household Survey. Although single-family homes still make up the largest proportion of housing, condos represented a higher proportion of recently built homes, according to the survey.

More than two thirds of Canada's condo stock is made up of low- and high-rise apartment buildings, while about 23 per cent are row houses.

Not surprisingly, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are condo hotspots, accounting for 53.5 per cent of the the total 1.6 million condo households in Canada.

That's a lot of people who're having to learn to live within a set of rules that freehold property owners don't face. CP said legal experts predict more neighbour disputes not resolved by strata councils will end up in court.

Such cases now are fairly rare, though the 2010 case of Natalia Korolekh might be called a harbinger.

An Ontario Superior Court judge ordered the Toronto stockbroker to sell her downtown condo within three months, upholding an enforcement order obtained by the upscale townhouse complex's management company.

The Toronto Star reported at the time that Korolekh hurled racist and homophobic slurs at neighbours, played loud music, tossed eggs and stones at neighbours' homes, poisoned their plants and intimidated people with her 150-pound Rottweiler. The condo council resorted to what was in effect an eviction order after Korolekh ignored demands she curb her behaviour and get rid of the dog.

[ Related: Four annoying neighbours and how to deal with them ]

The Jordison and Korolekh cases aren't the most extreme end of the "neighbour-from-hell" continuum.

The Star reported in 2011 that a Minnesota man was jailed for 18 years after hacking into his nextdoor neighbour's computer, planting child porn on it and stealing the man's identity.

Barry Ardolf also used the neighbour's computer to send obscene messages to work colleagues and email death threats to U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden.

Ardolf's nightmare campaign apparently was sparked by the neighbour and his wife calling police because Ardolf kissed their four-year-old son on the lips.

“Significantly, he feels no remorse for his crimes, explaining … that he engaged in the actions against his neighbors because he was ‘victimized,’” according to court documents filed by prosecutor Timothy Rank.

In Britain, a Nottingham University professor apparently was driven to suicide after local authorities ignored her complaints about harassment by tenants in a next door subsidized council flat, which she said had become a "crack den," the Telegraph reported last January.

“The situation is seriously affecting both my mental and physical health," Prof. Suzanne Dow, wrote to her local council. "I am frequently unable to sleep, and it often prevents me from doing my job [I often work from home].

"I cannot enjoy the outside space due to noise, foul language, verbal abuse and talk of drugs. I live in fear of my property being damaged [again], and even for my own physical safety whilst in my own home.”

Three weeks after sending the letter, Dow took an overdose of prescription medicine and never woke up, the Telegraph reported. It noted she was already in fragile mental health because of a recent relationship breakup and the lingering effects of childhood abuse.

A coroner's inquest into the death recommended fundamental changes in the way authorities deal with "neighbours from hell."