Two years after its partial collapse, the dust still hasn’t settled around Somerset House. On Monday, Oct. 26, a justice of the peace will hear the charges brought before Tony Shahrasebi and his company, TKS Holdings Inc., which owns the building, by the Ontario Ministry of Labour.
TKS Holdings Inc. is charged under the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act for failing to apply adequate safety measures on the building site during renovations in late 2007. All but two of the 13 charges have been resolved out of court.
This is just one of three legal cases to come out of Somerset House. Shahrasebi and the City have each filed lawsuits against each other, but these cases have yet to go to trial.
“They’re all suing each other, so of course there’s a lot of ill will, and that makes [the process] that much slower,” says David Dwoskin, the lawyer for TKS Holdings Inc.
Arlene Gregoire, director of building services for the City of Ottawa, says the city has filed a lawsuit against the owner for failure to comply with the building code, and to recuperate costs it incurred to secure the building after the collapse.
At the same time, TKS Holdings Inc. has filed a lawsuit against the city for lost business caused by the renovation delay.
Somerset House, which dates back to the late 1800s, sits at the corner of Bank and Somerset streets. The building was undergoing renovation when a back wall fell in, causing minor injuries to one worker.
The intersection was closed for about two months while engineers determined if Somerset House was safe to stand, or whether it should be torn down. A last minute court injunction blocked the city’s demolition order, but the renovation has been on hold since then.