Judge sends Surrey case back to Residential Tenancy Branch
Published 2:00 pm Thursday, February 26, 2026
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has sent a decision of the Residential Tenancy Branch back for reconsideration concerning a pair of Surrey landlords who were ordered to pay a former tenant $42,940 for failing to occupy the rental property after his fixed-term lease concluded.
Deepinder Randhawa and Vijaybir Pannu, who were ordered by the Residential Tenancy Branch to pay that sum to Dante Langarica, applied for a judicial review of its decision in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster where Justice Terry Schultes remitted the matter back to the RTB for another hearing.
“I have concluded that, viewed in its entirety and taking into account the arbitrator’s specialized expertise, this decision was patently unreasonable,” Schultes decided.
Schultes noted in his Feb. 23, 2026 reasons for judgment that part of the house was rented to Langarica but contained two other rental suites and the petitioners lived somewhere else. The landords sought as internal review of the decision which the RTB denied in December 2024.
Shultes found the arbitrator failed to explain “how, if the agreement had ended, the fact that it had done so a relatively short period before the end of its fixed term, or for reasons related to the tenant’s other complaints, meant that one of its terms still applied. In other words, the arbitrator’s explanation was logically unrelated to the conduct that it was intended to explain.
“Thus I am satisfied that the decision consists of conclusions that are either left unexplained or, when they are explained, reveal their supporting reasoning to be irrational.”