Good fences make good neighbours, but a communal dock licence apparently doesn’t.
A B.C. Supreme Court justice has ordered feuding waterfront neighbours in North Vancouver’s Indian Arm to stand down and be civil to each other – at least until their dispute over a dock can be settled more permanently by the courts.
In a recent court decision, Justice Wendy Harris ordered one set of waterfront owners, Anna and Benjamin Falcone, not to block their next-door neighbour, Georgina Kate Maddern, from accessing their communal dock with a locked gate. In return, the judge ordered Maddern to keep an outside float at the dock clear for her neighbours’ $500,000 boat.
The judge stepped in to the dispute after angry accusations between them and calls to the police to intervene escalated, with both sets of neighbours filing lawsuits against each other.
The boat-owning couple, the Falcones, who bought their property in January of 2016, allege that their neighbour has had drinking parties on the dock, allowed children without life jackets on it, permitted dogs to run off leash, made faces and pointed to their security cameras, and left bottle caps and lounge furniture lying about.
Their neighbour Maddern has countered that the Falcones have “called her derogatory names, filmed her and her guests and threatened to call the police on a number of occasions.” She added in court documents that her enjoyment of the dock is hampered by “the nine security cameras installed by the plaintiffs which are directed at the dock.”
“Both parties allege that they feel threatened by the other’s conduct. Both parties deny that they have engaged in any threatening behaviour,” Harris noted.
According to court documents, the two side-by-side waterfront properties – on the shores of Indian Arm near the community of Deep Cove – have shared a water lot licence permitting owners of both to access and use the dock for almost two decades without any problem.
But after the Falcones bought their property, “a dispute arose about whether the plaintiffs had exclusive use of the outside float to moor their large boat.”
The dispute quickly escalated, with the Falcones installing a locked gate across the pathway to the dock that runs along the edge of their property, leaving Maddern’s only access via the beach at low tide.
In court documents, Maddern alleged that has impeded her right to access the communal dock “because the beachfront route is submerged as much as 40 per cent of the time during any 24-hour period.”
The Falcones, meanwhile, have argued that the only permitted use of the dock is for “private pleasure boats and that drinking or lounging on the dock is not a permitted use.”
In handing down a temporary injunction prohibiting the Falcones from blocking Maddern’s access to the dock, the judge noted both sets of neighbours “bear some responsibility for what has occurred … .”
“Fundamentally the parties have different conceptions as to the use of the dock,” the judge wrote. “The (Falcones) are anxious to protect their $500,000 boat and want to have everything ‘shipshape’ on the dock, while (Maddern) believes that she is entitled to lounge on the dock with family and friends. The plaintiffs take the view that the defendant having a glass of wine on the dock is unsafe, while the defendant considers this enhances the enjoyment of her friends and the outdoors.”
The judge ruled both sets of neighbours should have access to the dock pending resolution of the issue in the courts, with the outside float reserved for the boat owners.
