Province ordered to pay nearly $800K in costs for expropriation case
CBC
The Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board has ordered the province to pay nearly $800,000 in costs for a case involving a couple whose home and business were damaged by a provincial highway twinning project.
The province has already paid the couple almost $600,000 in direct compensation for their losses. The new amount covers legal fees, fees for accountants and an engineer who provided expert testimony during hearings and other disbursements.
The case of Kevin Partridge and Jane DeWolfe began 11 years ago, when the province expropriated a small portion of their land in Antigonish County next to the South River to build a temporary bridge to support the twinning of Highway 104.
Crews filled in a marshy area alongside the river opposite Partridge and DeWolfe's home, removing the natural buffer for rising water levels. The house flooded several times, causing significant damage and destroying equipment and supplies stored on the property for Partridge's log home restoration business.
Partridge and DeWolfe filed a claim with the UARB after the flood, and later appealed the board's decision to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.
The couple's lawyer, Gavin Giles of McInnes Cooper, said out of the total award of $784,488.79, approximately $500,000 will go toward lawyer fees. But Giles said a portion of the legal fees will be redirected back to Partridge and DeWolfe.
"Quite frankly, we felt that they deserved more in-the-pocket compensation than they had actually received, and we tried to make an adjustment of that to the extent that we could," he said.
While the province — and ultimately taxpayers — are now on the hook for a significant amount of money, Giles said the case was extremely complicated and dragged on for over a decade, due in part to the province's actions.
"It was the government that chose to raise every single possible issue and chase those issues all the way through."
Partridge and DeWolfe were not awarded the full amount they had claimed for costs, which was over $1 million.
"Yes it's a great amount of money, but it was a lot of work, a lot of time," said DeWolfe. "If they hadn't have been so hard-nosed, it could have been settled earlier, cost less fees."
The couple has used some of the earlier award to begin repairing their home, including the septic system, roof, floors and mould remediation, but they still have a lot of work to do.
For now, they are looking forward to putting the whole ordeal behind them.
"Those years, it's almost like I was in survival mode," said DeWolfe. "It's kind of hard to almost take a breather … to let go of a lot of that stress, like, I'm not there yet."