All the witnesses agreed Burnaby resident Linda Drescher’s $5.2-million Deer Lake home is a “beautiful house” with high-end furniture and fixtures.
But not everybody agreed about whether it had been properly fixed up after an outdoor spigot connected to the home’s plumbing system failed and sent water spurting into the house, staining an unsealed bluestone fireplace and destroying the hardwood flooring and various fixtures.
Belfor Property Restoration, the company that came in to do the repairs told a Vancouver Supreme Court judge that Drescher still owed them $44,661.46 plus interest for the work.
But Drescher said the repairs were seriously deficient and she is entitled to hold back a portion of her insurance proceeds so she can hire another contractor to fix Belfor’s mistakes.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Emily Burke didn’t see it that way.
After hearing the two parties’ evidence, she concluded the Deer Lake home had been “largely restored to its pre-flood state” and ordered Drescher to pay the money plus interest and court costs.
“Overall, there is no doubt the defendant has very high standards and that her home is extremely important to her,” Burke said in a ruling last week (Dec. 10). “While that may be the case, the law does not establish a standard of near perfection in order for a contractor to be paid. This is no doubt disappointing to the defendant, but the law demands ‘reasonable performance,’ not perfection. Anything more would be unworkable and place contractors in the unenviable position of potentially returning to worksites unendingly before being paid.”
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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