Bridge lawsuit to resume with property valuations

A multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the Ambassador Bridge’s boarded-up homes will resume in June with real estate professionals introducing competing property valuations.

Real estate valuators, one for each side, will offer the court their estimates on what affected properties in the shadow of the bridge are worth.

Following the submissions of these final expert witnesses, the lawyers for both sides then make their closing arguments before Superior Court Justice Thomas Carey in the civil lawsuit.

The estate of Stephen Chaborek — the 95-year-old Indian Road resident who took on the bridge company but who died during the lawsuit currently underway — is seeking $16.5 million in damages for the blight created in an Olde Sandwich Towne neighbourhood.

This is the first of five separate lawsuits filed by residents against bridge company subsidiary Canadian Transit Company.

The Canadian operator of the Ambassador Bridge has bought up more than 100 properties in the area over the past two decades, many of them subsequently vacated, boarded up and left to rot. The lawsuits, brought by Sutts, Strosberg LLP, claim the bridge company turned a once pleasant neighbourhood into a slum and a nuisance that poses an ongoing threat to neighbours.

The bridge company has plans to tear down the homes to build a twin span and an expanded customs plaza in West Windsor.

The city has used bylaws to prevent demolition and slapped the bridge company with work orders requiring 114 of the homes be brought up to standards. The CTC is challenging those orders in a separate lawsuit.