We have a ton of questions from Flatchatters but for this week’s Question of the Week, we are going to delve back into the Lawyer In the Hot Seat online session we held a few weeks ago.
In it, strata lawyer David Bannerman answered questions on a variety of strata topics that had been sent to Bannermans over the past few months. Here’s one that will resonate with Flatchatters in schemes with “difficult” owners.
Question of the week: Can an owners’ corporation recover its legal costs from vexatious litigants?
First of all, you need to define what a vexatious litigant is. And it’s not someone who has made a genuine attempt to resolve a case at a tribunal but can’t accept the verdict so keeps appealing and appealing.
And as for costs, there are a limited number of circumstances where the tribunal will award costs against one party or the other but being a vexatious litigant is pretty much one of them. You can read the full explanation HERE.
Elsewhere in the Forum
- Do I need to have a reason if I don’t want to renew my tenant’s fixed term lease? That’s HERE.
- Committee has told me to remove a storage cage in my parking space that I had verbal approval for. That’s HERE.
- Strata law changes make it harder to get people on committees. That’s HERE.
- Can we have a stand-by special levy in case works cost more than we budgeted? That’s HERE.
- Banned from installing a security door because it would change the look of the building. That’s HERE.
- How do I go about getting double glazing for my common property windows? That’s HERE.
- Lawyers said the by-law we asked for won’t work. Do we have to pay for the one they gave us, which is different? That’s HERE.
So easy to ask and answer questions
Anyone can read our posts at any time, and now you can also ask and answer questions anonymously too.
As part of our continuing efforts to make the Forum more accessible, we are also now making it possible for anyone to click on “reply” and respond to published posts.
The first time you do it you will have to provide an email address (which won’t be visible on the Forum) and a nickname (which will).
The responses will still be moderated, so we can filter out the minority of internet nasties.
However, since this website is self-filtering – it’s only read by intelligent and engaged people like you – the moderation will only require a light touch.
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That way you’ll get an alert whenever the discussion moves forward, and you can also chip in with your own comments and questions. See you in the Forum soon.

