This page is legal information, not legal advice. It describes the law in general terms and cannot account for the facts of your situation. Reading it does not create a lawyer and client relationship. For advice you can act on, speak with a lawyer about your own matter.
What is taking land in Leamington
Highway 3 widening, Essex to Leamington
Roughly 16 kilometres widened to four lanes at about $138 million, with further sections between Maidstone Avenue and Arner Townline. Acquisition takes frontage and registers construction easements along the existing corridor.
Greenhouse and agricultural operations
Where the corridor runs past greenhouse and intensive agricultural land, the loss is rarely the acreage. It is the structures, services and access that cannot be relocated without capital cost, and the production lost while the work is done.
Municipal and utility works
County road widenings, servicing and Hydro One distribution take frontage and register easements independently of the provincial project.
Worth knowing in Leamington
Business loss is the head of compensation that gets underclaimed here. A greenhouse or intensive agricultural operation whose access, servicing or growing area is disrupted is not made whole by the market value of a strip of frontage. Documented production loss, the capital cost of relocating fixed plant, and the disturbance costs of working around construction are all separate claims under the Act, and they rest on the quality of your own records more than on anything an appraiser says. Start keeping them from the day the notice arrives, not from the day the dispute becomes formal.
Who can expropriate in Leamington
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •The Municipality of Leamington and the County of Essex
- •Hydro One
- •Essex Region Conservation Authority
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in Leamington as anywhere else in Ontario. What differs is which authority is taking the land and what the works do to what you keep.
- •Market value of the land taken, assessed without regard to any change in value caused by the scheme of the expropriation itself.
- •Injurious affection, the drop in value of the land you keep. On partial takings this is frequently worth more than the strip taken.
- •Injurious affection where no land is taken, under section 1(1)(b), for owners damaged by the construction of the works, and not their use, even though nothing of theirs is expropriated. Section 22 bars this claim absolutely unless it is made in writing with particulars within one year of the damage being sustained or becoming known, and nothing is served on you to warn you the clock is running.
- •Disturbance damages, the real costs you incur: moving, storage, mortgage prepayment penalties, professional fees, re-establishment.
- •Business loss, if you operate on the property, including lost profits and goodwill attributable to the works.
- •Interest at 6% per year under section 33 on the market value and injurious affection portions, running from when you cease to reside on or make productive use of the land, and where the land taken was your home, a 5% allowance on the market value of the residential part under section 18(1)(a)(i), provided the land was not being offered for sale on the date of expropriation. That allowance is payable to an owner other than a tenant; a tenant is compensated for disturbance under section 18(2) instead, apportioned by the length of the term and the tenant's investment.
Under section 32, if the Ontario Land Tribunal awards you 85% or more of the amount the authority offered, the authority pays your reasonable legal and appraisal costs, and you do not have to beat the offer outright to get there. The qualification worth knowing is that the Court of Appeal held in Shergar that "the amount offered" includes later settlement offers, not just the section 25 offer, so an improved offer raises the bar and falling below it puts costs in the Tribunal's discretion. Favourable, but conditional.
Served in Leamington? Here is how to get advice.
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General legal information about Ontario expropriation law, not legal advice. Reading this page does not create a solicitor and client relationship.