The BC Supreme Court has sided with a commercial landlord in a lease dispute with its marijuana dispensary tenant after the city ordered the business closed while amassing thousands in strata corporation fines.
In its January 19 ruling, the court found that the Heritage Dispensary Clinic Society and Jonas LaForge must deliver up possession of the unit at 512 Beatty Street, which has housed a Cannabis Culture dispensary since the spring of 2016. According to the ruling, the numbered company landlord, 1028840 B.C. Ltd., signed a five-year lease with the society starting June 1, 2015. The lease was later amended to include LaForge, who was suspended by the College of Naturopathic Physicians of British Columbia and fined $25,000 for, “among other things,” failing to disclose his criminal record in the U.S. and illegally prescribing and recommending medical cannabis to patients in Skype-based consultations.
In May 2016, the City of Vancouver ordered the location closed and filed its own petition in BC Supreme Court, naming as respondents the numbered company, the dispensary society, Jodie Emery and Tony Ali – “the last three of whom were alleged to be ‘the operator of a retail business at the Premises known as Cannabis Culture.’”
However, the petition didn’t go to a hearing, with “no evidence before the Court explaining why that is so.”
Meanwhile, the strata corporation has been fining the landlord $600 a month since October 2016, and a sale of the unit is pending.
“The fines related to the operation and the odour of the illegal dispensary exceed $25,000,” the judgment states.
The landlord opted to terminate the lease in September 2017, but the dispensary society objected, with LaForge claiming in an affidavit that “the Landlord ‘does not really take issue with my use of the Premises but is simply looking for a way to terminate the Lease in anticipation of the pending sale’ of the property.” The society and LaForge also claimed the landlord’s past acceptance of rent while knowing the dispensary was operating illegally amounted to waiving the right to terminate on that basis.
BC Supreme Court Justice Nigel Kent rejected that argument.
”The simple fact is, unless and until the Government of Canada changes the law, unlicensed storefront retail marijuana dispensaries such as the one operated by the Tenants in this case are illegal,” Kent found. “Each day it is open for business the Tenants are not only breaching the law and operating without a valid business licence, they are also breaching the Lease made between these parties.
“While the Landlord may have waived past breaches of the Lease and any resulting right of forfeiture through its acceptance of rent in full knowledge of the facts, such waivers are not thereby irrevocable for the duration of the Lease.”
Kent found the lease was validly terminated and ordered the society and LaForge to hand over possession of the unit no later than noon on January 25.
Lawyer Gareth Reeves, listed as counsel for the society and LaForge, did not respond to BIV’s request for comment by press time.
