IT LOOKS LIKE THE WHOLE BUILDING WAS GOING TO POT

Talk About Weeds In The Suburbs!

Cranberry Lane should have been named Marijuana Manor -- a
pot-infested condominium building in Richmond in which every third
tenant was growing dope.

Although the situation drew public attention in 2005, police
underestimated the scope of the illicit drug production, according to
a startling civil judgment released Wednesday over who will pay for
the damage done by the illegal harvesters.

"Beneath its placid exterior, Cranberry Lane was infested with
marijuana cultivation operations, commonly called grow ops," B.C.
Supreme Court Justice Christopher Grauer concluded in his ruling
released Wednesday.

"Fully one-third of its 90 units were found to have been so occupied.
The plaintiffs thereafter incurred expense in restoring each unit to
a habitable state, and lost rental income."

He said their insurance should cover some of the costs -- estimated
at about $500,000.

Lying beyond the cranberry fields on the eastern reaches of Lulu
Island, the building is in an idyllic setting.

In March 2005, however, that placid bucolic exterior was exposed as a
false front for a raft of illegal operations.

On March 10, masked gunmen invaded a unit hoping to find a growing
operation but realized they had the wrong suite. They said sorry to
the startled tenants, and left.

Police found the apparently intended target growing operation next door.

A week later, a tipster told the cops nine other units were being
used to grow pot.

The resulting investigation revealed that illegal activity was rife
- -- and RCMP held a news conference announcing 19 units were involved.

It turns out there were actually 29 units, which were the subject of
the lawsuit, and another that had been found a few weeks before the
botched grow-rip home invasion.

John Karlovcec, a retired 25-year RCMP veteran, testified the
suburban condo was a perfect location for guerrilla cultivation given
its location, high density construction, good transit routes and
building security that allowed tenants to monitor who was entering and leaving.

All of the units had varying amounts of damage and the media exposure
made it difficult to rent them afterwards.

As a result, the owners of Strata Plan LMS 3904 and Carrington
Properties Ltd. sued Commonwealth Insurance and St. Paul Fire and
Marine Insurance claiming coverage for damage due to illicit drug activity.

They claimed their policy considered such destruction to be the same
as if a hurricane or flood hit the building and a one-time $50,000
deductible should apply.

The insurance company did not deny coverage but argued each growing
operation was separate and the deductible applied to each unit.

This was key because if the losses from each unit constituted a
separate occurrence, the deductibles would exceed the loss.

Justice Grauer decided there was no evidence linking the units, save
for the nine identified by the informant.

"Accordingly, in the absence of evidence of such a connecting factor,
which will be explored below, I conclude that it cannot be said that
the losses from the 29 units are all directly attributable to one
cause simply because activities of a similar type were carried on in
them," the justice found.

"What the evidence shows is that the tenants of the 29 units had
moved in at different times over the years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.
Their names disclose no particular pattern. The majority [but not
all] would appear to have been of East Asian ethnic origin
(principally Vietnamese and Chinese), but that by itself is of no
significance in today's Lower Mainland."

Even the RCMP said at the time: "We don't believe there was one
operation being controlled by a central mother ship."

The losses arising from the nine units reported by the informant
constitute one occurrence subject to one deductible of $50,000,
Justice Grauer said.

"Those losses include the repair costs and the rental losses
attributable to the unavailability of those units while they were
being repaired," he said.

The losses arising from each of the remaining 20 units constitute 20
separate occurrences, each subject to a further deductible of $50,000.