{"id":410891,"date":"2026-01-15T12:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T12:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/410891\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T12:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T12:32:07","slug":"ontario-man-whose-house-was-mistakenly-demolished-in-2018-finally-reaches-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/410891\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario man whose house was mistakenly demolished in 2018 finally reaches settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Years after his home was demolished by mistake, an Ontario<\/a> man has finally come to a settlement with the companies behind the tear-down.<\/p>\n

Angelo Raitsinis\u2019s Mississauga property was erroneously destroyed during what was supposed to be a planned demolition of a property across the street. <\/p>\n

While on vacation in Europe in 2018, Mr. Raitsinis said he received an alarming call from a neighbour. He was informed that the home he bought in 2015 on a sizable 60-by-242-foot lot to live in with his wife and three children had been demolished. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was in complete and utter shock,\u201d he said in an interview. <\/p>\n

From what he later pieced together, he said, equipment was dropped off at the wrong lot, and a crew showed up the following morning and started tearing down the house.<\/p>\n

Since then, Mr. Raitsinis has been in a multiyear, $1.5-million legal battle with a contracting company and their trucking and excavating subcontractors. <\/p>\n

Mr. Raitsinis had claimed that the 2018 incident left his family displaced and financially strapped. The companies involved in the demolition disputed the extent of the harm and argued in their defence that Mr. Raitsinis had previously sought the demolition of the property. <\/p>\n

On Friday, in a second round of pretrial hearings, Mr. Raitsinis appeared at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Brampton, where the lawsuit finally ended in an undisclosed settlement with the demolition company and the contractor who enlisted them. <\/p>\n

When it was demolished, the residence did not have any furniture but still held some personal belongings, according to Mr. Raitsinis. The house needed work, he said, but the family planned to move in after their Budapest vacation. <\/p>\n

They had been living with relatives before their planned move \u2013 a situation that has since become permanent, he said. <\/p>\n

The demolition was only the beginning of the family\u2019s ordeal, according to Mr. Raitsinis.<\/p>\n

After being assured that the demolition company was insured and that the matter would be resolved quickly, things began to stall, he said.<\/p>\n

According to Mr. Raitsinis, the insurer, along with the demolition company and contractor, prolonged the legal process and offered inadequate settlement proposals.<\/p>\n

The director of Divyaana Contracting Inc., the company that helped organize the tear-down and rebuild of the home that was supposed to be demolished, claimed he was never physically present at the time of the incident, but sent an agent to observe, according to court records. <\/p>\n

The company claimed its duty was to give the correct address and that the liability for what transpired \u201crests squarely upon\u201d the subcontractor that destroyed the property.<\/p>\n

The defence also argued that the plaintiffs \u201cexaggerated and misrepresented\u201d their damages, and pointed to the fact that they had previously sought the demolition of the property, and that the property was never used for residential purposes afterward.<\/p>\n

Mr. Raitsinis said that while he and his wife once explored building their dream home on the property, they couldn\u2019t secure the financing and never pursued it.<\/p>\n

An August, 2016, Mississauga Committee of Adjustment agenda lists Mr. Raitsinis and his spouse as applicants seeking a minor variance to build a two-storey house on their property.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started with the permit process,\u201d Mr. Raitsinis said. \u201cAt some point, though, we realized, the bank is not going to lend us the money we need to build this house, and we aborted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Years after his home was demolished by mistake, an Ontario man has finally come to a settlement with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,2741],"class_list":["post-410891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-pf-ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}