Sault lawyer pleads Averys case before Supreme Court

To date, Sault Ste. Marie developers Jeff Avery and Dr. Patricia Avery have lost every legal attempt to gain approval for their plans for a Pointe Estates subdivision in a rural area of the city’s far west end.

Those plans dashed, 1704604 Ontario Ltd. (the company owned by the Averys) wish to take Peter Gagnon, a local man who lives adjacent to the Avery property and five other members of the Pointes Protection Association (PPA) to court and sue them for $5 million in damages.

The developers have gone all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to seek a trial to pursue those damages, with Sault lawyer Orlando Rosa representing them and appearing before the Supreme Court Tuesday.

Rosa told the court the PPA presented information, at an Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing in 2014, regarding the Sault Ste. Marie Region Conservation Authority board’s role in initially approving the Avery subdivision.

Rosa has called the providing of that information at the OMB hearing a “breach of contract,” going so far to suggest the case is “a matter of public interest” and possibly precedent setting. 

Rosa was questioned by Supreme Court judges as to why the case qualifies as a matter of public interest during a four hour session in Ottawa Tuesday.

Lawyers representing the PPA told the judges the group presented reliable evidence regarding their environmental concerns about the proposed Pointe Estates subdivision development at the OMB hearing and did not use the hearing as a forum to vent.

When it was learned the Averys would ask the Supreme Court to allow them to go to trial and sue the PPA, a great deal of interest was sparked among several groups, each of which took the opportunity to speak at Tuesday’s Supreme Court session.

Those groups, acting as ‘intervenors,’ included women’s groups, the Ecojustice Canada Society, Greenpeace Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and numerous media companies, including CTV, Global News, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Postmedia.

Lawyers speaking on behalf of the coalition of intervenors questioned how the Averys have been harmed and the merit of their request to go to trial and seek damages.

An Ecojustice lawyer said “the defendants (the PPA) should accordingly be given full rein to argue for dismissal.”

Rosa said previous rulings against the developers were “unfair.”

It is anticipated the Supreme Court will hand down its decision as to whether the Averys should be given the right to sue in three to six months.