An adjudicator has dismissed a claim from a “conscientious and persnickety host” that short-term renters of his Chance Harbour home caused more than $34,000 in damage to the walnut floor by allowing people who attended their wedding to dance in high heels.
Dr. Mark Andrew Sutherland rented the main floor of his “prestigious” Pictou County home to Natalie Cameron and Brandon Jones for their July 2016 wedding, but the situation “went dramatically and expensively wrong,” Raffi Balmanoukian, an adjudicator with the small claims court of Nova Scotia, said in a written decision released Tuesday.
The custom-built home came with a specific warning about the walnut floor on the main level that cost $35,000 to install.
“Please be careful of the following,” said the rental contract, “high heel shoes are forbidden as they will leave indent marks.”
The couple took posession of the home July 9, 2016.
“There was a discrepancy in the evidence on whether Dr. Sutherland assisted in moving furniture to clear an area of the main floor; he could not specifically recall,” said the decision. “On cross-examination, he admitted that it was possible that he was present, but that re-arranging the furniture was ‘not for dancing.’”
Sutherland testified he saw flashing lights that night inside his cottage and people with their “‘arms in the air’ indicative of dancing by the wedding party in (his) living room,” Balmanoukian said in his decision dated Sept. 3.
The doctor testified that when he got back in the house, he “‘saw pockmarks’ in his floor when he dropped his TV remote; on looking more closely, he ultimately found over 150 ‘dents or swirls’ in the walnut floor.”
He told the court that before the wedding, there was only minor damage to the floor. Two disparate estimates to fix the damage Sutherland said happened during the wedding pegged the cost of repairs at $12,451 and over $34,000.
Sutherland’s cleaner, Catherine Jane McGee, testified “there was no material impact on the walnut floors prior to July 9, 2016.”
But when she returned to the home after the wedding “she noticed marks in front of the fireplace and where the chesterfield had been – there were ‘too many to count,’” said the decision.
The groom, whose bride changed her last name to Jones, told the court “that the wedding party ‘took every precaution’ with respect to the floors; that Ms. Jones and her sister were at the door and told people to read the ‘no heels’ sign and to change shoes. A basket of flip-flops, purchased by the Joneses, was made available,” said the decision.
Natalie Cameron (Jones) testified that “to accommodate the walnut floors, she had her wedding dress altered and replaced her wedding shoes with foot jewellery, and that her stepmother replaced her dress for the same reason; and that her 91-year-old grandmother had to have ... ambulatory assistance (because she had removed her skid-proof shoes to avoid marking the floor).”
To listen to the defendants, said the adjudicator, “the floors went from being a point of caution and attention, to becoming the be-all and end-all of the whole week and the central focus of all of their occupancy efforts. I put it to them that this was an exercise in ‘taking care of the floors with a side event of a wedding.’ Ms. Jones replied, ‘pretty much.’”
While Balmanoukian felt some of the wedding party’s evidence might have been overblown, it was not incredible.
Sutherland was “a credible and balanced witness,” said the adjudicator. “He was calm and professional both in chief and on cross-examination. He is not the sort to try to ‘milk’ a tenant for every perceived act or omission.”
But he failed to prove his case.
“What I find more likely than any other scenario is that there was wear and tear over time — including by the Joneses, but not unreasonably and definitely not to the extent claimed,” Balmanoukian said.
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