A Coquitlam couple will have to pay a $35,000 court settlement for defamation after a dispute with their neighbours over some trees turned ugly.
According to court documents, the incident started in 2011, when Harbhajan and Harbans Dhadwal demolished a home on Blue Mountain Street. During the course of the work, roots located on their property were damaged enough that trees in the neighbouring yard had to be removed.
Those trees belonged to common-law couple, Ronald Demenuk and Robyn Soames, who responded by putting up signs on their property that made racist and defamatory statements about the Dhadwals, according to court documents.
Displays that read "This is Canada, not India" and "Some people are alive simply because it's against the law to kill them" were posted by Soames on her property and stayed up for several months. The judgement also noted that a guestbook was placed next to the signs for people passing by who wished to leave a comment.
Throughout the trial, Soames and Demenuk maintained that they did not know that the Dhadwals were of Indian descent and said the signs were only put up to inform the public of what was happening to trees in Coquitlam.
Supreme Court Justice Peter Voith said the assertions made by Demenuk and Soames were not plausible and that the displays were posted with malicious intent.
"I understand that over time, the parties and, in particular, Ms. Soames and Mrs. Dhadwal, had come to dislike each other," Voith said. "I find, however, that Ms. Soames' dominant object was mean-spirited, spiteful and directed at the Dhadwals."
Voith ordered Demenuk and Soames to pay $25,000 in general damages and another $10,000 in aggravated damages.
The defamation suit was a counterclaim to legal action launched by Demenuk seeking restitution for his trees.
But the court dismissed his claim, noting that the roots that were damaged were located on the Dhadwal property. That means the property owners had a right to remove the roots and, according to the judgement, should not be liable for the destruction of the trees.
The judge was also critical of the city of Coquitlam's tree bylaw, writing that the policies that existed at the time of the incident were incoherent.
"The city does not regulate in any way what trees a person may plant on their property or where they can place such trees," he wrote. "It seems curious, and a self-evident problem, that a person might, without restriction, plant a tree of any dimension on the border of their property on one day and that their neighbour would be limited in what he or she might do to address the foliage and roots of that tree on the next day."
