OSOYOOS TIMES-November 24, 2010
By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times
What might be the final chapter in a two-and-a-half year saga revolving around a solar screen installed on a window of a home in the Casitas del Sol manufactured home community on 115th Street has closed.
Last December, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal found that the Casitas del Sol strata corporation had discriminated against Mick Shannon, a retired train engineer who suffers from a type of lung disease known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), when it ordered him to remove a solar screen he had installed on a window at his home in 2008.
The screen was installed, without the corporation’s permission, to help alleviate some of Shannon’s COPD symptoms including breathing difficulties which are exacerbated by exposure to air conditioning.
When tribunal member Lindsay Lyster made her decision against the strata corporation, she found that the corporation and its representative, Brian Amos of Oliver’s Amos Realty, had engaged in improper conduct during hearings on the matter by introducing inaccurate evidence.
Amos is Casitas del Sol’s strata manager.
When the matter was before the tribunal in the summer of 2009, Maureen Poucher, who served as the corporation’s president at the time, provided evidence that the corporation’s council had considered Internet documents regarding COPD in September, 2008.
The consideration of these documents was a central part of the council’s case that it had looked at some recommendations for the management of COPD and had also considered alternatives to the screen in making its decision about Shannon’s request to keep the screen on the window.
Lyster argued, however, that such documents could not have been considered in the fall of 2008 as the documents were not printed until March 30, 2009, and decided the council and Amos were at fault.
She also found that Amos had breached Shannon’s privacy by leaving a letter from Shannon’s doctor containing personal medical information in the Casitas del Sol clubhouse following a meeting of corporation members in the spring of 2009.
When the B.C. Real Estate Council (REC) learned of the tribunal’s complaints against Amos through the media, it began an investigation into whether Amos had breached the Real Estate Services Act while he was involved in the matter involving Shannon and the strata corporation.
The REC was looking into whether Amos had engaged in improper conduct based on the assertions that he had participated in the disclosure of misleading evidence during the tribunal and was careless in handling Shannon’s medical information.
In a letter to the REC dated Aug. 26, 2010, Amos’ lawyer, Thomas Schiller, argued that any information contained in the letter from Shannon’s doctor had already been disclosed to corporation members by Shannon when he launched the human rights tribunal complaint.
Schiller also argued that the documents on COPD that Poucher had printed from the Internet in the fall of 2008 were read to corporation council members and then shredded for the sake of confidentiality.
But Amos reprinted the document in the spring of 2009 in preparation of a meeting to inform Casitas del Sol residents of the situation regarding Shannon.
The document Amos printed included the date it was printed out on and that document ended up before the tribunal.
Poucher testified during the tribunal hearings that the documents before the tribunal were the exact ones considered by the corporation’s council.
But she was referring to the content of the material and didn’t mean the exact physical copies looked at by the council, Schiller said.
Because of the confusion, he added, Lyster determined Poucher had offered misleading evidence.
Last month, the REC informed Amos that its Complaints Committee decided to dismiss its investigation.
Amos said he has no plans to challenge the tribunal’s ruling.
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