Tracey Lothian loved living in the “modest” one-bedroom house she rented just outside Lunenburg, N.S., until a dispute with her landlord started brewing.

“I was extremely happy in this place. It was wonderful — until it wasn’t. And then, you know, everything changed,” she said.

In the spring of 2024, Lothian’s landlord said he was going to renovate and he needed her to move out. She left, but he didn’t carry out the renovations. He brought in a new tenant and raised the rent.

A residential tenancies officer ruled that he had acted in bad faith. When he appealed, a small claims court adjudicator upheld the earlier ruling. He’s now appealing again, taking the case to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, where Dalhousie Legal Aid says an important precedent could be set for all renovictions in the province.

The backstory

The man Lothian signed a lease with in 2019 died at the start of 2024 and his husband, John Demmings, took over management of the property. Within two months, Demmings proposed doubling the rent from $750 to $1,500 per month. He would later submit to the court it was on the advice of his accountant who said he was losing money on the rental.

Nova Scotia has a rent cap that would make such a jump illegal, and Lothian said she highlighted this fact to Demmings. Instead, she agreed to the maximum legal increase of five per cent.

About a month later, the landlord told her about his renovation plans. The rental is located on the same rural plot as his business, and he said he intended to subdivide and then sell the house after fixing it up.

Lothian stayed for several months while she and Demmings tried to negotiate a settlement. They came to an agreement through mediation and she moved out. He returned one month’s rent and her security deposit.

Less than two weeks after she left, she learned that a new tenant had moved into her old place and was paying $1,000 per month, 33 per cent more than what Lothian had been paying. 

“I could’ve still been there,” she said. “The injustice of it — it felt like I needed to address.”

Meanwhile, Lothian was spending $1,500 to rent a new apartment and had incurred costs from moving.

“I don’t want to see other tenants run roughshod over like this. I want people who behave badly to be held accountable,” she said.

Motivated by retaliation

Lothian said she was feeling vindicated when a small claims court adjudicator ruled in her favour last month.

Brent Silver said Demmings’s actions were “heavy-handed, in bad faith and based on a motivation or desire to retaliate against the Tenant for her refusal to agree to an abrupt, unilateral doubling of her rent by the landlord.”

Silver ordered Demmings to pay Lothian more than $8,000 in damages, upholding a decision from the quasi-judicial Residential Tenancies Program issued last year, which Demmings had appealed.

Demmings told the court the renovations didn’t happen because a contractor backed out. But Silver questioned the veracity of that claim given that eight months later, the landlord gave no evidence he was seeking another contractor and the new tenant was still there.

“I find Mr. Demmings’ conduct as a Landlord, in my opinion, to be very concerning,” said Silver.

But Lothian’s feeling of vindication was short-lived.

A second appeal

Through his lawyers, CBC twice asked for an interview with Demmings. His lawyers acknowledged passing along the requests but Demmings did not respond.

In an email to Lothian in early February, Demmings’s lawyers said he intended to pay the damages ordered by Silver. About a week later, he filed a notice of appeal to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.

Lothian said she is disappointed and frustrated, but willing to continue.

“I’ve dug in this far, I feel like I should see it through. I want to.”

Lothian has represented herself thus far and said she will continue to do that. She said she can’t afford a lawyer, but her income is too high to qualify for representation from legal aid. 

Demmings’s appeal notice argues the small claims court adjudicator made an error in law in his ruling. The notice points to the mediated settlement over the eviction and suggests Lothian is not entitled to apply for further compensation.

Dalhousie Legal Aid says the case could have cascading impacts for any tenant affected by a renoviction.

“We’re hopeful that the outcome is positive and the Supreme Court upholds the decision of the small claims court,” said community legal worker Sydnee Blum.

“Not just for Ms. Lothian, but for all the tenants who perhaps come to mediated settlements under an assumption of good faith and who may soon be able to seek compensation if the terms of that settlement are not upheld.”

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