Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 ::: Law: The Oakville Case, Uncategorized

In January of this year, Justice Douglas Gray of the Ontario Superior Court struck down the Town of Oakville’s signs by-law on the grounds that it did not comply with the Charter of Rights. As a remedy, the court also ordered the Town to immediately issue 21 billboard permits to Larry Vann’s Vann Media, a company that specializes in advertising on Pizza Boxes.

Yesterday, in a unanimous decision, that remedy was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal which called it inappropriate. Oakville was, however, ordered to re-write parts of its by-law but was given directions which indicate that, under the weird way that law and economics collide, Oakville could write a by-law which would amount to a de-facto ban on new billboards in reality, but not on paper. We would expect Vann to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. An appeal by Oakville is less likely, but may come if Vann appeals.

We previously covered this issue in:

Complete Liveblog of Vann Media vs Town of Oakville at the Ontario Court of Appeal Yesterday

Vann Media is Thoroughly Out-Factumed by the Town of Oakville’s Diligent Bay Street Litigators

Larry Vann Tries to Pull a Fast One on Oakville, and the Ontario Court of Appeal Shuts Him Down

Town of Oakville Appeals Ontario Superior Court Decision to Quash Signs By-Law

We’re pretty happy with the decision from the court mainly because Grey’s decision to order Oakville to issue the 21 billboard permits contrary to Oakville’s by-law created new common law, along the lines of American jurisprudence. This decision reverses that and makes it easier for Toronto to move forward with signs by-law enforcement - it also makes it more difficult for our City Solicitor to justify her habit of entering into undisclosed “understandings” with billboards companies, for which she never informs City Council. Not that we think she’ll stop doing that.

Here is the decision:

The key part of the decision is paragraph 53. In this paragraph the court lists the sections of the by-law that have to be re-written then, quite remarkably, gives suggestions as to how they could be made constitutional. Here are the suggested re-writes:

· Rather than allowing only one sign per property, be it a first party sign or otherwise, the Town could allow more than one sign for a property with a very large frontage.

· The town could continue to ban billboards in commercial and residential zones, but allow third party signs in “non-prestige” industrial zones located outside of the “E2″ zones.

· Rather than limiting billboards to vacant lots, billboards could be allowed on very large properties where there is a large portion consisting of open space.

· Rather than ban billboards along all the roads listed in Section 39(5)(b), signs could be permitted near some of those roads.

Were the town to carefully follow these suggestion, we don’t think Vann Media would build any signs in Oakville because the size of sign is still limited to 80 square feet and a critical mass of 80 square foot signs is required to make the economics work in a small place like industrial Oakville. You can, however, make tons of money on 10′x20’s in Oakville. We warn the Town of Oakville that we expect Larry Vann to eventually apply for permits for a number of 80 sqf. signs in the most obnoxious possible locations then parlay those permits into variances for standard 10′X20. Oakville’s new by-law needs to account for exactly that strategy.

In terms of precedent for Toronto, we feel that because Oakville has only one legally existing billboard, and because Toronto has thousands, and because Toronto’s new billboard by-law is unlikely to come anywhere near as strict as the suggested re-writes in this decision, this court decision has limited impact for Toronto. The key victory from Toronto’s perspective is the quashing of the 21 permits.

We shall see what happens next.