Exterior of the Bianca Condos from Dupont Street, in Toronto, on Aug. 11, 2023.Lucy Lu/The Globe and Mail
A Toronto condo owner found to have used spray paint to assault her neighbours and also emblazon swastikas on their doors is fighting a court order that she sell the home that she has been banned from visiting or living in for more than a year.
While it’s relatively rare for a court to force owners to sell condo properties over extreme or anti-social behaviour – there are typically fewer than half a dozen instances a year according to condo law experts – the case highlights the potentially heavy cost of failing to get along with your neighbours. But participants in the effort to remove the owner in this case also say they were subjected to an almost unprecedented weaponization of processes in everything from human-rights complaints to various professional bodies, as well as personal harassment that went beyond the pale.
On April 8, 2024, Justice William S. Chalmers issued an order that concluded Toronto-based hairdresser and business owner Marina Tsatskin “had made offensive, racist and anti-Semitic comments to other unit owners” at 280 Howland Ave., after she moved into the nine-storey mid-rise building known as the Bianca Condos in 2022. Justice Chalmers found Ms. Tsatskin’s conduct meant she was “unable or unwilling to abide by the rules and regulations of the condominium and that she had ‘repudiated the co-operative foundation of condominium living.’”
Ms. Tsatskin had already been blocked from living in the building since Nov. 1, 2023, on an interim order sought by the building’s corporation (Toronto Standard Condominium Corporation No. 2931). “The condominium corporation had all sorts of other complaints and information. It couldn’t just sit on its hands and do nothing,” said Jonathan Fine, lawyer and litigation expert with Lash Condominium Law. According to Mr. Fine, the harassing comments may not have been enough to obtain a judgment on their own, but the swastika incident provided a key piece of evidence. “With the swastika, there was no doubt about that; there was video,” he said.
Ms. Tsatskin, who describes herself as a religious Jew, spoke to The Globe and Mail and denied that she made any anti-Semitic remarks and alleges that she has been the subject of discrimination and abuse. She also denies she is the person captured in video taken on July 4, 2023, where a woman sprays black paint on a door and then sprays the face and hands of the person taking the video. Ms. Tsatskin was arrested by the Toronto Police Service and later charged for that incident. Despite Justice Chalmer’s finding in civil court that she committed those acts, the charges have not been proven in criminal court.
The April ruling gave Ms. Tsatskin a chance to avoid having to sell her unit if she could restrain herself from harassing anyone connected to the condo. On Nov. 27, 2024, Justice Chalmers came back with a new ruling saying “instead of demonstrating an ability to comply with her responsibilities, Ms. Tsatskin’s unacceptable conduct has continued.”
Multiple residents and Lash staffers made submissions about a campaign of complaints and harassing comments made to their employers, as well as professional complaints made to the Legal Society of Ontario about Mr. Fine and others. Ms. Tsatskin made complaints to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario – as did her mother, Faina Zilberman, and her sister, Michelle Zilberman, – which Justice Chalmers ruled were not legitimate and were made for a “collateral purpose” or retaliation. The ruling also restrains Ms. Tsatskin and her family from making any more HRTO complaints without first getting permission from the court.
“This is the first time I’ve heard about somebody going to all these different regulatory agencies,” said Audrey Loeb, partner with Shibley Righton LLP and co-leader of its Condominium Practice Group. What is familiar is a condo owner engaged in litigation to attempt to retaliate, Ms. Leob said, but in her experience the lashing out tends to stay inside the boundaries of the condo community. “Typically, what people do is they go after the board members, they go after the property manager. We call them ‘condo commandos,’” she said.
Ms. Tsatskin is appealing the November order to sell, but on Jan. 7 the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed her appeals of the April ruling and also a Sept. 4 order that she pay $100,000 of the condo’s legal costs. Ms. Tsatskin told The Globe she plans to file a judicial complaint against Justice Chalmers, and, despite her second-floor condo being listed for sale currently with an asking price of $1.3-million, she said has no intention of selling.
“I am not going to stop, I’m going to the end,” said Ms. Tsatskin. “Victory is my only option. … These people are trying to rob me. I’m the wrong person, they are going to remember me forever.”
Among the court filings made by Ms. Tsatskin’s lawyers about her conduct are claims that she is mentally ill, and therefore deserving of accommodation.
“You can go down the list of these cases where people are being ordered to sell their units and the overwhelming majority have a mental illness,” said Bradley Chaplick, partner with Levitt, Di Lella, Duggan and Chaplick LLP. Mr. Chaplick said that recent case law has found that the test for what accommodations are reasonable leave little wiggle room for condo owners. “That’s a losing argument every time: your right to accommodation is subject to undue hardship [a legal doctrine], which means harm to other people. You don’t get accommodation to treat other people badly.”