62-Storey Shangri-La residential condo tower located in Downtown Vancouver
Court certifies class-action lawsuit over windows at Vancouver’s Shangri-La tower
Jaonne Lee-Young
The Vancouver Sun
All owners of condo units in the high-end Shangri-La building can take part in the claim.
The glass-clad Shangri-La building. Photo by Gerry Kahrmann /PNG
A B.C. Supreme Court case alleging that defective glass windows have been fogging, leaking and spontaneously breaking at the Shangri-La residential condo tower in downtown Vancouver has been certified as a class-action suit.
The move allows all owners of condo units in the high-end Shangri-La live/work building, where there are two strata — one for units on floors 16 to 43 and for those on floors from 44 to 62 — to take part in the claim.
The B.C. Supreme Court ruling giving a green light to the class action proceedings was issued in early February by Justice Paul Walker.
The lead plaintiff, who owns and lives in a unit on one of the highest floors, first filed a notice of civil claim back in December 2015.
In September, 2021, the plaintiff sought to amend the claim by expanding the class definition and adding new claims of negligence and a number of new parties, but the court found some of these to be “an abuse of process,” according to a note on the defendants’ lawyers’ website.
The class action certification now comes after leaked strata minutes in recent years had been describing the possibility of the building’s windows cracking as a “real and unacceptable risk.”
The court’s ruling in February gave more details that illustrate the challenging number of stages, components and parties involved when it comes to potentially assigning fault.
It described the building’s curtain-wall system as “consisting of prefabricated panels constructed as distinct four-sided insulated glass units (IGUs) which are said to be integral to the proper functioning of the building and separate the exterior and interior environments. IGUs include inner and outer glass (called lites) separated by a metal spacer bar.”
The Shangri-La Hotel and residential tower at Georgia and Thurlow. Photo by Ian Lindsay /PROVINCE
“The outer and inner lites have different structural attributes. The outer lite is heat-strengthened glass while the inner lite is tempered glass. The inner lite is twice as stiff as the outer lite and unlike the outer lite it is supposed to break into small pieces when shattered. Both glass lites are sealed to the spacer using two types of sealant which are meant to provide an air- and vapour-tight cavity between the glass panes. A chemical known as a “dessicant,” designed to absorb moisture in the air between the two lites, is contained inside of the spacer bar.”
The defendants named by the suit are the legal owner of the land, KBK No. 11 Ventures Ltd., the developer, 1100 Georgia Partnership and its partners, which includes companies related to local groups such as the Peterson Group and Westbank Corp.
“It will be interesting how they identify the reason for the … failures,” said Tony Gioventu, executive director for the Condominium Home Owners Association. “It could be a number of reasons, and it’s not even just thinking beyond the developers and builders to the suppliers, but how the glass and materials were stored and transferred to the construction site.”
The building, which is Vancouver’s tallest tower and known for its floor-to-ceiling ocean and mountain views, was completed in 2009 and is contains some of the city’s most expensive condos.
An initial set of minutes for a special general meeting for the lower floors strata in September 2020 noted that, over the years, shattered inner panes meant some windows had already been removed and replaced on nine floors.
The minutes alleged up to 70 per cent of the windows were failing “prematurely by decades and reaching just a fraction of their expected lifespan of 40 years.”
A few months later, these strata minutes for the units in the lower part of the building on floors 16 to 43 were amended with a more muted version, leaving out the above details and an initial estimate that it could cost $65 million to reconstruct the curtain wall and replace the window units in increments.
Each strata also has two other legal actions underway, one to recover costs under warranty from insurers and the other against developers, builders and contractors.
These four other cases will be heard by the court at the same time, starting in September in a trial that is expected to take 130 days, according to the recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling about the class-action certification.
The strata allege “that the systematic dangerous defects pose a substantial risk of physical danger, including to the health and safety of any person in the vicinity of the building.”
The plaintiff, named in previous filings as Amos Michelson, a resident who owns and lives in a penthouse unit, “advances the same allegations in this proceeding concerning systemic defects,” according to the ruling.
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