In 1996, Pattison Outdoor Sued the City of Toronto and Won the Right to Build 22 Billboards
In March 1996, the City of Toronto Land Use Committee recommended that City Council amend the signs by-law to prohibit third-party ground and pedestal signs in commercial zones.
This came after Pattison Outdoor went on a two-year ground-sign building spree, and the Land Use Committee had had just about enough.
The new by-law prohibiting ground signs was passed into law effective April 2, 1996.
In the days before April 2, 1996, Sid Catalano of Pattison Outdoor filed 18 permit applications to build 22 ground signs that did not conform to the new by-law, but did conform to the by-law that was about to be repealed.
Sensing an act of bad faith, Toronto’s Chief Building Official, John Morand, rejected Catalano’s 18 permit applications and refused to allow the signs.
Pattison then sued the City of Toronto on the grounds that the 22 signs were applied for before April 2, 1996, even though it was the intent of City Council to ban such signs. An as-of-right permission is an as-of-right permission, said Pattison.
This is Pattison’s Notice of Application [PDF] before the Ontario Superior Court wherein it sought to compel Morand to issue the 18 permits.
The City of Toronto didn’t have a legal leg to stand on when it declined to issue the permits to Pattison. A few months later, City Council approved a confidential settlement of the litigation, and the court case was dropped. City Legal has refused to release this settlement to IllegalSigns.ca pursuant to an FOI that we filed. However, we know that the sign locations listed in the lawsuit obtained permits during the first half of 1997.
