Limitation Period (N5, N6 & N7)

Caselaw.Ninja, Riverview Group Publishing 2021 ©
Date Retrieved:	2024-04-25
CLNP Page ID:	1953
Page Categories:	Legal Principles, Limitations, Defective Notice (LTB)
Citation:	Limitation Period (N5, N6 & N7), CLNP 1953, <https://rvt.link/4o>, retrieved on 2024-04-25
Editor:	Sharvey
Last Updated:	2023/03/03

TSL-49701-14 (Re), 2015 CanLII 3157 (ON LTB)

11. The Landlord’s solicitor correctly stated that there exists no time limitation for landlord applications under the Act (unlike tenant applications which have a limitation period of one year). Limitation periods exist in part however because people forget, memories become fuzzy and tend to become less reliable over the course of time.

(...)

13. In any event, if this conclusion is incorrect and the grounds of the application were met, eviction would have been denied pursuant to section 83(1)(a) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (the ‘Act’). This is because there should be finality and, despite the absence of an applicable limitation period, it would have been unfair to evict the Tenant because of something done a decade ago. It would have been particularly unfair in circumstances where the Landlord should have known about the damage within the knowledge of its agent all along, where the Landlord acquired the property sight unseen four years prior to service the N7 and where he did not inspect the rental unit until 2014.

TNL-96369-17-IN (Re), 2017 CanLII 142679 (ON LTB)

6. The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (the ‘RTA’) does not provide for a limitation period for a landlord to serve a notice of termination. In theory, the Landlord could have served the notices many years after the assaults took place.

7. Since there is no statutory limitation period, it seems to me that in appropriate cases, a defense of laches might be available to a tenant whose case has been prejudiced by an unreasonable delay. There must be some limit on a landlord’s ability to seek eviction on stale facts, and laches would seem to provide a reasonable framework.

8. However, in this case I do not find the delay to approach the point where laches might be invoked. The notices were served seven months after the incident occurred. In the context of legal proceedings, seven months is not very long at all. The limitation period for most RTA claims is one year. The limitation period for most civil matters is two years.