Property that the vendors sold to the taxpayer contained chromium and the vendors did clean up work until the problem of contamination in runoff water was resolved to the satisfaction of the City. The property then was sold to the taxpayer for a cash payment of $25,000 and the assumption of any obligation that the vendor was under to clean up the property. The taxpayer treated the cost to it of the property as being what a valuation report (which was not put in evidence) had estimated would be the fair market value of the property if it had not been contaminated.
In holding that the cost of the property to the taxpayer was $25,000 as assessed by the Minister, Paris J. found that the taxpayer had not met the onus upon it of showing that it was under a legal obligation to expend any amount to clean up the property (and, in fact it had not done so).