BC lawyer wins $12,000 human rights damages for discrimination by landlords
Tribunal finds landlords failed to accommodate anonymous lawyer’s sensitive medical condition
A B.C. lawyer has been awarded $12,000 in compensation after the province’s Human Rights Tribunal found his landlords failed to accommodate his disability.
The lawyer – identified only by the initials AB because of the potential stigma attached to his condition – suffers from bowel issues that regularly leave his clothes and towels soiled with feces and blood, according to the ruling.
He brought the claim against his landlords Neil Mina and Mark Rankin – himself a retired lawyer – after they refused to replace the unit’s washing machine with one capable of performing a hot water wash that would ensure his laundry could be properly sanitized.
“I find that the Respondents failed to take all reasonable and practical steps to accommodate AB once they were notified of his Medical Condition. Further, they provide no evidence of hardship, let alone undue hardship, that would have prevented them from providing AB with a washing machine capable of doing a Hot Water Wash,” wrote acting Tribunal Chair Paul Singh in his recent ruling.
Singh awarded AB $12,000 for injury to dignity, and also ordered Mina and Rankin to pay the lawyer a further $2,500 in reimbursement for the new washing machine he eventually paid for out of his own pocket.
Vancouver lawyer Ashley Syer, who acted for AB, told Court Report Canada she was pleased to see the tribunal recognize the “significant impact this discrimination had on my client.”
“I hope this decision will provide some guidance to landlords about their obligations to accommodate their tenants’ disabilities, so their tenants will not end up in a similar situation to the one AB faced,” she added.
The decision says AB moved with his wife into the apartment in November 2017, and that rent was meant to cover laundry facilities in the unit.
However, the lawyer soon noticed issues with the apartment’s hot water supply, and a sour smell on his washed clothes, which he believed were linked.
According to the ruling, AB asked his landlords to replace the washing machine in January 2018 after a technician explained that the model in their apartment was only designed to pull in hot water from pipes, rather than heating cold water inside the machine, but Rankin refused on the basis that it wasn’t broken.
However, it wasn’t until April 2018 that AB explained his medical condition and his need for a hot water wash, as his frustration with the situation overcame his privacy concerns.
Several months later, the lawyer made a specific request for accommodation of his condition by email, writing that his landlords’ refusal to fix the machine “has been humiliating and demeaning.”
In his emailed response and testimony at the tribunal, Rankin maintained that his approach had nothing to do with humiliating anyone, but that he saw no reason to install a new washing machine when a technician had confirmed the existing one was in good working order.
In his decision, Singh wrote that the landlords’ duty to accommodate under B.C.’s Human Rights Code was triggered once they became aware of AB’s disability, rejecting their argument that it was enough for them to meet their Residential Tenancy Act obligation to provide a washing machine which operated as designed.
In addition, the landlords argued that their investigation of the hot water issues and engagement of a washing machine technician showed they acted “reasonably and without intent to discriminate.”
“However, even if the Hot Water Delay contributed to the problem, that would not have discharged the Respondents’ obligations under the Code. The Respondents were under a duty to reasonably accommodate AB by, for example, providing a washing machine capable of a sanitize function, whether or not the underlying cause was attributable to the Washing Machine or the Hot Water Delay,” Singh’s decision reads. “Additionally, whether the Respondents believed they acted reasonably and without intent to discriminate is not relevant nor does it mitigate their obligations under the Code, since the Code does not require an intent to discriminate.”
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