How to litigate 3 times at the LTB in order to save 35 dollars and 18 cents.

Dear friends,

This story could be titled: how to litigate 3 times at the LTB in order to save 35 dollars and 18 cents.

A couple of months ago, I showed you an LTB decision where the tenant first rented a room, then the whole apartment, and then a room again, all within the same apartment. We treated this as 3 different tenancies, each with its own agreement. The adjudicator at the first hearing agreed with us. The disputed issue was the last month’s rent deposit that the tenant gave to the landlord when the first tenancy began. Our position was that this deposit was used for the last month of the previous tenancy, and that the tenant entered the new final tenancy without a deposit. The adjudicator agreed with this approach and ordered the tenant to pay the landlord $2,088.65. The tenant did not like that decision and filed a request for review. At the review hearing, the adjudicator allowed the review, but did not hear the matter on the merits, and we were given a new hearing date. At that hearing, the case was heard de novo, meaning completely from the beginning.

At the new hearing, the adjudicator found that all three tenancies were essentially one large tenancy. Well, the tenant’s living space expanded and contracted, and the rent went up and down accordingly, but it was still one and the same tenancy. Therefore, the last month’s rent deposit could not have been used somewhere in the middle of the tenancy, and it was still in the landlord’s hands. The tenant seemed to have already started celebrating victory, when suddenly the case took a new turn. Our position was that if the last month’s rent deposit had not been used, then the month for which we had tried to use it turned out to be unpaid. And if so, the tenant had to pay it. The tenant tried to prove that the landlord had forgiven the rent for that month, but he did not succeed. He submitted a letter from me, which I had sent to him together with the N4 form, where it clearly said that the landlord was forgiving the arrears from the previous tenancy, but was not forgiving the last month and would use the deposit to pay for the last month.

In the end, as they say, six of one, half a dozen of the other. The tenant was ordered to pay the landlord $2,053.47. The difference of $35.18 is the interest on the last month’s rent deposit.

Landlords, try to document everything clearly and do not enter into questionable agreements with tenants, otherwise you may end up having to litigate 3 times just to prove that you were right. The question of whether this was three tenancies or one turned out to be an interesting legal question. Two adjudicators saw it differently. It would be interesting to know what a higher court would say. What do you think: was this one tenancy or three different ones?

LTB-L-087247-25-RV - June 4 2026_redacted.pdf

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