Littered across the kitchen counter of Stuart Weinstein’s one-bedroom condominium is an array of real estate agent cards. Tucked in the corner of the living room sits an open box filled with legal documents compiled over the years. Desperate to sell his 12th floor unit, Weinstein now spends much of his time sifting through old paperwork in an attempt to free himself from a dispute with his condominium board that has consumed his life.
In the space of eight years, Weinstein went from being the lone dissenter over a roughly $10,000 plumbing repair bill levied by his condo corporation to more than $262,000 in debt, with a lien on his one-bedroom condominium leaving him on the verge of losing his home.
“They’re using my ledger as a cash register,” Weinstein told the Star.
In 2018, the condo corporation at 30 Harrison Garden Blvd., located near Yonge Street and Highway 401 in North York, informed unit owners that plumbing throughout the building had to be replaced, leaving each owner responsible for upwards of $10,000 in costs.
Weinstein, 59, who has owned his unit for more than 20 years, opposed the decision, arguing there was nothing wrong with his plumbing and disputing the process used to impose the work.
Following a 2019 resolution attempt, an arbitrator sided with the condo board and ruled Weinstein had to replace the plumbing in his unit and pay significant legal costs. Judges later upheld the arbitrator’s decision, awarding additional enforcement-related expenses to the condo.
After the arbitration award and subsequent court decisions were added to his unpaid common expenses, the condo corporation placed a lien on his unit in December 2019.
Since then, Weinstein says they’ve added tens of thousands of dollars in additional legal fees to his ledger without judicial oversight and have refused to provide invoices for them — a process both he and the condo corporation acknowledge is permitted under Ontario’s Condominium Act.
His shoulders slumped as he sat in his largely empty apartment, dejected, the warm tones of his boxy unit tempered by the blue pinstripes of his freshly ironed dress shirt.
“I hardly even stay here anymore,” he murmured. “It feels like they’ve stolen my home.”
He says his case is a cautionary tale for condo buyers, as the law allows certain disputes to be converted into common expenses and enforced through liens — legal claims placed on someone’s property to secure a debt — that can be applied without a judge first signing off, allowing costs to grow quickly.
Weinstein is now trying to sell the property but says he’s been unable to do so with a lien registered on the title.
“All I want is to get the lien removed from my title so I can sell my home and move on,” he said. “Instead, the numbers just keep growing.”
From $10,000 pipe replacement to six-figure liability
The dispute began in 2018 after Toronto Standard Condominium Corporation No. 1466 (TSCC 1466) discovered Kitec plumbing, a recalled plumbing system associated with water damage and increased insurance risk, throughout the building.
All owners agreed to the replacement, except Weinstein, who says he was unemployed and didn’t want to foot up to $10,000 in costs.
“There was nothing wrong with my Kitec,” he said, providing the Star with three separate inspection certificates stating his plumbing was in good shape.
Nonetheless, under Ontario’s Condominium Act, when an owner refuses to comply with mandatory repair work, a condominium corporation may apply to court for a compliance order.
And in Ontario condominium law, certain costs arising from disputes — including legal and enforcement expenses — can be added to a unit’s “common expense” account, the same ledger used for regular maintenance fees. Once recorded there, they are treated as arrears and can be secured through a lien against the unit.
In Weinstein’s case, the dispute was directed to arbitration, and in 2019 the arbitrator ordered Weinstein to replace the Kitec and pay just over $60,000 in legal costs.
From that moment, things only worsened for Weinstein.
Weinstein challenged the outcome, but an Ontario Superior Court judge upheld the arbitrator’s decision and granted an additional $70,000 for expenses related to enforcing it as well as $10,000 for legal costs, according to his lawyer.
The court found that a significant driver of the unusually high legal costs was Weinstein’s repeated attempts to bring urgent motions to remove the lien, which were ultimately dismissed.
“What was I supposed to do? Nothing?” said Weinstein, who represented himself at the time. “I had to do something. I have been fighting like a desperate rabid dog in search of justice and I regret the classless nature of it.”
He says he feels betrayed by the Ontario government, which is supposed to protect condo owners.
“It seems there are two levels of justice. Unconscionable justice given to those represented by expensive lawyers, and justice for self-represented,” he said. “If I could afford lawyers at the beginning, I would not be having my condo stolen as I will owe the correct $0, not the phantom $262,661.82.”
Weinstein says he challenged the arbitration award because the arbitrator had been disciplined by the Law Society of Ontario on multiple occasions — including once for misappropriating more than $60,000 from a client’s divorce settlement in 2002, which resulted in him losing his licence to practise law — and had previously mediated cases involving the condominium corporation’s then-law firm, Fine & Deo (now Deo Condominium).
The condominium corporation’s current counsel, Timothy Duggan, said the arbitrator should not be discredited based on past disciplinary history, and that, regardless, Weinstein was reluctant to participate in the process.
“The reality is that Mr. Weinstein is the author of his own circumstances at this point,” Duggan said.
Costs mount as lien allows ongoing charges
Over the next several years, additional legal fees were added to Weinstein’s account. By October 2023, the condominium account showed multiple charges that appeared as “miscellaneous legal fees,” amounting to more than $166,000.
Duggan told the Star that “there’s no requirement in the statute for the condominium corporation to register a new lien in respect of future defaults.”
This means that once a single lien is applied, the corporation can continue adding legal fees to the ledger without further judicial oversight — a system that, Duggan says, reflects the statutory framework, even if it feels aggressive to homeowners like Weinstein.
“We bill the corporation, and the corporation applies charges to the ledger,” Duggan said. “We may provide them with our opinion as to whether or not the amount is properly added to the unit owner’s ledger as a charge back, depending on the individual circumstances.”
Eight years after first being billed for the plumbing replacement, Weinstein’s lien payout statement has grown to approximately $239,000, with interest and additional costs — including the service of the notice of sale — further inflating his debt to more than $262,000.
Weinstein’s most recent lawyer, Steven Bookman, says the condominium corporation has failed to produce invoices or supporting documentation to substantiate the extra charges.
“We have asked them to provide us with the details of what these are for and they are ignoring us,” Bookman said. “You can’t say you owe me almost an extra $100,000 without itemizing it.”
In 2025, TSCC 1466 the condo corporation changed its position and offered a cost reduction that almost matched the unexplained amount on his payout statement. But Weinstein refused the offer, questioning the legitimacy of the entire payout statement.
Instead, he inquired about the extra charges, and why TSCC 1466 is offering to forfeit them without him ever seeing the invoices.
“Assuming the legal fees were legitimate — or even if they weren’t — this reduction would kind of wipe them out,” Bookman said.
The Star reached out to Duggan inquiring about the extra charges, but he said TSCC 1466 will not be commenting on any issue related to a “potential settlement.”
On May 21, Duggan issued a notice of sale on behalf of the condominium corporation, giving Weinstein until July 8 to pay off his debt.
Bookman confirmed that TSCC 1466 can legally sell the home under power of sale if Weinstein “fails to pay legitimate fees.”
Condo lien powers face judicial scrutiny
Ottawa lawyer Rodrigue Escayola, who has litigated similar disputes, echoed Weinstein’s critique. Historically, he said, some condominium corporations, managers, and lawyers adopted a “high-handed” approach, quickly converting compliance disagreements into financial defaults.
Ontario courts have cautioned against treating compliance disputes as arrears disputes — most notably in Amlani v. York Condominium Corporation, a 2020 decision that Escayola won and which he says reshaped condominium enforcement practice.
In the Amlani case, the underlying issue was whether a unit owner was smoking in their unit. Rather than resolving that allegation first, the corporation attached legal fees to compliance letters. When the owner did not pay, the dispute shifted from a conduct issue to an arrears dispute — eventually ballooning to roughly $25,000 without a ruling on the original allegation at that stage.
The corporation then triggered a power of sale. But the Ontario court cautioned against treating compliance enforcement as arrears collection in this way, emphasizing that liens are intended to secure unpaid common expenses rather than escalate disputed allegations into debt enforcement.
In Weinstein’s case, the dispute was adjudicated through arbitration and later court decisions. However, Escayola says a similar concern can arise where enforcement itself can generate additional legal fees that are added to a unit’s ledger and treated as common expenses, allowing them to be secured through the same lien even after the original dispute has been decided.
“Liens were never meant to be a sword to enforce compliance. They exist to ensure payment of common expenses,” Escayola said. “I’m not saying this is what’s happened here, but there has been abuse in the industry — treating an owner like a money tree.”
Weinstein says he’s now desperately trying to get Ontario’s courts to re-evaluate his case.
Till then, however, his anxieties surrounding the status of his unit are peaking as his July 8 deadline fast approaches.
As his lawyer fees mount, Weinstein’s had four buyers walk away after discovering the lien, which has to be fully paid out before any sale can close.
“I’m just asking to get out.”
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