Windsor has spent $3M fighting Ambassador Bridge in court

The City of Windsor has spent nearly $3 million in legal fees battling the Ambassador Bridge company in court, through October 2015.

Windsor has been involved with numerous different pieces of litigation with the bridge company, including the Olde Sandwich Towne bylaws addressing heritage status, property standards issues and a federal court matter, which is now going to the Supreme Court.

When asked about these fees, city lawyer Wira Vendrasco said that's part of the process of a long court fight.

"It isn't just one court case, we're talking about a whole series of court cases," Vendrasco said. "When it's the municipality and someone has brought an application or a lawsuit against the municipality, we're obliged to defend it."

In one instance, the City of Windsor went to the Supreme Court of Canada asking it to consider an appeal of a ruling made by the Federal Court of Appeal, which stated the Federal Court does have jurisdiction to decide whether the municipal bylaws apply to the bridge.

That case is back in court Thursday.

The cumulative cost of those actions, as of October 2015, was $2,922,296, according to numbers provided by the City of Windsor.

Thought council budgets for litigation fees every year, these types of legal fees are difficult to anticipate, Vendrasco explained. 

"We just don't know what's going to happen," she said. "Certainly we never expected to be at the Supreme Court of Canada. There was no way of budgeting for this kind of an item."

The city was able to recover $1,350,250 in legal costs for some of these issues, and therefore the net cost spent as of October of 2015 was $1,572,046.

Vendrasco explained the nearly $1.4 million in recovered costs came from one case involving various bylaws in Olde Sandwich Towne.

The city won that series of litigations and the court ordered costs to go to the city, she said.