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Homeowners acted with ‘contempt’

Courts: Blind Bay residents ordered to pay neighbours $50,000 in damages.
Decorative Scales of Justice
Scales of justice

Homeowners in Blind Bay who built a towering retaining wall that encroached on a neighbouring property acted with “disdain and contempt,” a B.C. Supreme Court justice ruled.

Justice Nigel Kent handed down a judgement in a long running feud between neighbours at Shuswap Lake Estates, in Blind Bay. He found house owners and builders Svend Lojstrup and John Jensen trespassed on their neighbour’s property as well as violated a subdivision building scheme and a Columbia-Shuswap Regional District bylaw.

The pair were sued by Travis Drager and Dean Strong, who built their own home at Shuswap Lake Estates in 2007.

In 2011, Lojstrup and Jensen bought the neighbouring property to the east.

“Extensive retaining walls were installed on the west side of the site in order to support the creation of a flat building area and the defendants built a house which the plaintiffs and their neighbours have labelled a ‘monstrosity’ and ‘abomination,’” Kent wrote.

The defendants originally constructed the retaining wall on Drager and Strong’s property, moving it only when threatened with legal action.

But the reconstructed wall nonetheless failed to meet a minimum setback from the neighbours’ home.

“The plaintiffs’ objections to both the initial trespass and the setback encroachment of the replacement wall were treated by disdain and contempt by the defendants,” Kent wrote.

Kent wrote Lojstrup, who now owns the home by himself, must deconstruct and move the encroachment on the setback area, or compensate Drager and Strong.

He also set a strict set of conditions and schedule if the two sides fail to come to a settlement that avoids deconstruction and replacement.

The B.C. Supreme Court justice ruled Lojstrup and Jensen must pay $50,000 in general, special and punitive damages.

“The conduct of each of the defendants has been arrogant and high-handed in the extreme,” Kent said.