Photo: Nicholas Johansen

The evacuated Hadgraft Wilson Place, with the excavated area for the UBC Okanagan tower in the foreground.

It could be another year before a lawsuit against UBC Properties Investment, the City of Kelowna and others is certified as a class action. And an actual trial could be much further away.

The suit was filed at the Vancouver registry of the Supreme Court of British Columbia last May after several buildings around the UBC Okanagan tower project were damaged during the tower's excavation process.

Damaged buildings included Hadgraft Wilson Place, where 84 people once called home, but they were evacuated last April due to the damage to the building. The nearby Okanagan CoLab building was also closed in late 2023 due to damage.

In a recently filed application in the BC Supreme Court, the plaintiffs in the suit are seeking the certification of the suit as a class proceeding. The application is scheduled to go in front of a judge in Vancouver in May, but according to the application, a certification hearing likely won't be scheduled until some time after November, subject to the court's availability.

This is because, according to the application, a number of steps must take place before the certification hearing.

If the suit is certified as a class action, a possible trial would still be far off, with a number of listed steps required between certification and a trial, including a period of notice given to class members, time to exchange documents between parties and a proposed 18-month period for examination for discovery.

UBC denied claims

In addition to UBC Properties Investments and the City of Kelowna, the suit names a number of other contractor companies that have been involved in the development. Several have filed responses, denying responsibility .

Earlier this year, UBC Properties responded to the suit, denying all claims for financial relief for those impacted by the damage.

"The UBC defendants admit that some damage was experienced by Hadgraft Wilson Place, the CoLab Building, and the Legion Building, but denies the nature and extent of damages alleged, and further denies that all such damage was caused by the excavation and construction activities on the lands, and put the plaintiffs and putative class members to the strict proof thereof," the document filed in February states.

"The UBC defendants say that all material times they reasonably relied on the professionals and contractors they had retained to complete the excavation and construction activities safely on the lands.”

UBC Properties Trust lawyers noted that the organization took steps to assist Hadgraft Wilson Place residents in finding alternate accommodations, and offering emergency funding of $12,000.

Last December, former tenants of Hadgraft Wilson Place, which included single parents, seniors and people with disabilities, told Castanet they've been stuck paying double and triple the rent they had been paying in the subsidized housing development.

They said they just want to go back home, but that's looking less and less like a possibility as the year anniversary of their eviction approaches.

While the development's initial plan was for a four-storey underground parking garage, that plan has been changed to just two storeys, based on advice from engineers early last year.