Full text of the lawsuit served on us by Landlord Credit Bureau

In the interest of full transparency with readers of this website I have decided to publish the contents of the Landlord Credit Bureau lawsuit against me and my family. You can download a scan of the entire filing in PDF format above.

My name is David Pace-Bonello and I am the publisher of this website. I’ve lived as a tenant at 94 East Avenue South for nearly 20 years. My wife Joey and I raised children here. This is our home.

A few years back our building was sold to LiveWell Property Management. Our personal data was taken without our consent and given to a company LiveWell shares corporate directors with, the Landlord Credit Bureau.

When this happened, we resisted. We did the research and learned our rights. We found the mechanisms we could use to help protect ourselves from this egregious behaviour. Along the way we even found the information that made the connection between LiveWell and LCB.

Our neighbours aren’t all so fortunate. I opted to take what we had learned and create a resource for our neighbours – other people in our building and other LiveWell properties across the city. I felt they deserved to know the things we had learned before getting entangled with LCB. Why should they have to do the same searches, pay for copies of the same documents and arrive at the same conclusions when the heavy lifting had already been done and what remained was to document the experience and share it?

The Landlord Credit Bureau wants this information removed permanently from the internet and to legally bind me from speaking any further about them. They want to own the domain names and all the writing I have done so they can ensure it never sees the light of day again. They want to ensure my neighbours never have a chance to find this information collected in one place and make use of it.

In order to protect my neighbours rights to see material that may be unflattering to Landlord Credit Bureau or LiveWell I had to identify myself to the corporation I am criticizing and who own the building my family lives in. It’s a scary proposition but the alternative is to let powerful corporations decide what you get to see and whose voices you get to hear on the internet. The alternative is leaving all of my neighbours to fend for themselves.

So now my identity is out there I just wanted to get it out of the way. Who I am doesn’t matter. What Landlord Credit Bureau and LiveWell are doing does and people have a right to hear about it.

That is the final word on this lawsuit until there are developments I can share but I have made my intentions crystal clear to LCBs lawyer this afternoon.

Landlord Credit Bureau has served us with a lawsuit

They claim we are violating their copyright by publishing screenshots of their website and even mentioning their name. They also claim that the information we post to share with our neighbours to help them understand their rights when dealing with the Landlord Credit Bureau constitute defamation of their business and it appears Mr. Killam in particular.

We live in a country that enshrines legal protections for free expression. We do not believe anything we have published to date about the LCB or Mr. Killam is defamatory, we believe it is all true and have sufficient supporting evidence to demonstrate this. In fact, there are many instances where our reporting actually clears up misconceptions about their business. If anyone at LCB took issue with anything we have been saying since the summer they have never been in contact with us despite always having a publicly available email address and being completely open to hearing from LCB or Mr. Killam (or anyone else associate with the business for the matter).

What the LCB and Mr. Killam opted to do instead is file a DMCA Takedown Notice against our website. The only way we could fight back is to identify ourselves to Mr. Killam and the LCB and risk this very lawsuit by asserting our right to free expression, criticism and commentary. Most people never respond to a DMCA for exactly this reason and let the powerful silence them. We chose not to let multimillionaire corporate landlords and their credit bureau schemes stop us from offering help to neighbours who feel genuinely intimidated and confused by what the LCB and LiveWell Properties does to them.

We said we were prepared to defend our right to publish vigorously in court and we meant it. In the days to come we will keep you posted on developments and will be posting the entire contents of the claim they filed as soon as we are able to.

To our neighbours and friends, we thank you and wish you all the best. This is not the end. This is only the beginning. We are here for you.

Getting Started

Welcome

You probably have questions about LCB


Just found us? Want to get the full story on what the Landlord Credit Bureau is and what your rights as a tenant are? Here is an index to our introductory guides (all links open in a new tab).


Key Stories

Essential reporting


Media Coverage

Getting the word out

A Good Kick in the Ass for the Not-So-Good Tenants”

  • Danielle Paradis reporting for Canadaland

CANADALAND#365 An App For Landlords To Blacklist Tenants

  • Jesse Brown broadcasting for Canadaland

 ‘Consent Is Not Required’: List Of ‘Positive And Negative’ Tenant Behaviour Raises Privacy, Discrimination Concerns

  • Jack Hauen reporting for Queens Park Briefing

‘Free benefit’ or blacklisted? Hamilton tenants and landlords clash over private information

  • Sebastian Bron reporting for The Hamilton Spectator

LCB has responded to the Spectator article. You can read about it here:


Latest Posts

The newest posts from LCB Facts


Results

What we’ve accomplished so far

  • Office of the Privacy Commissioner investigation into Landlord Credit Bureau (findings pending)
  • Office of the Privacy Commissioner investigation into LiveWell Property Management (findings pending)
  • Ministry of Government and Community Services investigation into Landlord Credit Bureau for Consumer Reporting Act violations (findings pending)
  • Exposed the secret field in the LCB Tenant Record viewable only by landlords and forced LCB to change its policy
  • After our reporting LCB stopped claiming EI3PA data security certification
  • Engagement from NDP MPP Jessica Bell, Opposition Housing Critic
  • Engagement from NDP MPP Andrea Horvath, Leader of the Opposition (MPP for our riding)
  • Engagement from NDP MP Matthew Green (MP for our riding)
  • Engagement from Hamilton Ward 2 Councillor Maureen Wilson
  • Engagement from Hamilton Ward 3 Councillor Nrinder Nann

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