Each Monday I intend to provide a potpourri of Quebec (and Canadian) legal developments. Issue 06 takes a brief look at a number of class actions, beginning with the certification against Tim Hortons, one dealing with Mentor silicone breast implants, and a class action authorization against Thrifty, the car rental company. Also, a class action was certified against the federal government over workers’ rights.
Class actions
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Quebec ordered to pay $164 million for Charter breach in class action suit
The Quebec government has been ordered by Superior Court to pay a staggering $164 million in compensatory damages, plus interest, for knowingly violating the rights of thousands of individuals who were arrested and illegally detained for a longer period of time permitted by the Criminal Code prior to appearing before a Justice of the Peace.
The comprehensive decision by Quebec Superior Justice Donald Bisson reveals that during a five-year stretch, from 2015 to 2020, the Quebec government stopped offering court appearances on Sundays and statutory holidays due to austerity measures, and failed “in their obligation” to put in place a system that complies with section 503 of the Criminal Code, “knowing full well that their flawed appearance system led to the systemic violation of the fundamental rights” of some 24,000 individuals.
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Drip pricing under the microscope following Quebec Court of Appeal ruling
A Quebec Court of Appeal ruling that ordered Air Canada to pay more than $10 million in punitive damages in a class action lawsuit underscores the growing risks companies engaging in drip pricing face, according to legal pundits.
The Appeal Court decision, following a long 15-year legal battle, marks the third significant case dealing with unbundled pricing over the past year, with the Competition Tribunal ordering Canada’s largest cinema chain, Cineplex Inc., to pay a record penalty of over $38.9 million for deceptive marketing practices by adding a mandatory $1.50 online booking fee, the first enforcement of the drip pricing provisions introduced by the amendments to Canada’s Competition Act. In June 2024, the Competition Bureau also reached an agreement with SiriusXM Canada, a subscription-based satellite radio and streaming content provider, over subscription price representations. Sirius agreed to pay a $3.3 million penalty, enhance its compliance program, and pledged not to engage in drip pricing.
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Monday’s Medley – Issue 03
Each Monday I will provide a potpourri of Quebec (and Canadian) legal developments. Issue 03 takes a brief look at a Quebec Appeal Court ruling that will delight discount brokers while irk consumers, Quebec’s latest effort to impose a nationalist culture, and decision that examines the notion of social profiling.
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Quebec appeals ruling that held taxi permit holders were victims of disguised expropriation
A ruling that ordered Quebec to pay more than $143 million, plus interest, to compensate thousands of former taxi permit holders has been appealed both by the provincial government and class members.
Quebec Superior Court ruled last summer that the provincial government illegally expropriated the permits of taxi drivers without fair compensation after the Uber online ride-hailing service forcibly made its entry into the market a decade ago, a decision that Quebec is asking the Court of Appeal to set aside.
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Monday’s Medley (Issue 01)
Each Monday I will provide a potpourri of Quebec legal developments. Here’s the first issue. It begins with the Supreme Court refusing to hear an appeal from the Mohawk Mothers, Hydro-Québec ordered to pay $5 million to a First Nation, a $2 million for contaminating water, a class action settlement dealing with psychiatric patients, and a class action that was certified against a Montreal billionaire.
Categories: Aboriginal law, Class actions, Monday’s Medley, News, Quebec, Rulings, Supreme Court of Canada -
Class actions over COVID-19 certified against Google and Facebook
Two separate but related class actions were recently certified by Quebec Superior Court against tech behemoths Google and Meta for allegedly breaching Quebecers’ freedom of expression by censoring or making content directly or indirectly related to COVID-19 unaccessible.
In the suit against Google, class action representative plaintiff Éloïse Boies, who operates a YouTube channel “Élo veut savoir,” alleges that several of her videos that claimed that governments and large companies were censoring information about COVID-19 were deleted. The videos apparently violated the platform’s policies for propagating “incorrect medical information contradicting that of local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding COVID-19.” Boies is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for anyone who, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, suffered censorship of their videos by YouTube, as well as to anyone who was unable to view these same videos.
A similar claim was made against Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook, by Christian Leray, an administrator of the Facebook group Réinfo Québec, an organization of professionals, mainly from the healthcare sector, dedicated to informing the public about the Covid-19 pandemic. Postings by Leray and the group that called into question COVID-19 public health measures were deleted by Facebook, a decision Facebook maintains was justified because it has a policy that prohibits misinformation that could cause physical harm, relays false information about COVID-19 or because information is at odds with its “community standards.” Leray, like Boies, too is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Lukasz Granosik dismissed arguments by the tech giants. Both Google and Facebook maintained that the class actions should not be certified because the class action representatives do not present a defensible case and therefore cannot adequately represent the group. Google added that there are no common issues, but a bundle of eminently individual cases, which makes a class action inadmissible in this case.
“If Facebook…controls the content that finds its way onto its platform, it cannot deny all responsibility,” held Justice Granosik in Leray c. Meta Platforms inc., 2024 QCCS 1513. “If it carries out censorship, prevents certain people from posting certain information, punishes them by restricting access to their account and thus hinders the free circulation of ideas, it exposes itself to having to defend its ways. Its decision may be well-founded, and it may not incur any liability, but the question arises and it is clear that the plaintiff has a simple possibility of success on the merits.”
Justice Granosik came to an identical conclusion in Boies c. Google, 2024 QCCS 1512.
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Montreal lawyer disqualified as representative counsel in proposed cryptocurrency class action
In a case that deals with the bounds of “entrepreneurial lawyering” and whether it exceeds the “proper limits of ethical rules,” Quebec Superior Court disqualified a Montreal lawyer as the representative’s counsel in a proposed class action suit seeking compensatory and punitive damages for individuals who bought or sold cryptocurrencies from Shakepay inc.
The proposed class action in essence alleges that Shakepay charged hidden commissions, contravening the Consumer Protection Act, Civil Code of Quebec, and the Competition Act.
Justice Lukasz Granosik said that disqualifying a lawyer requires a “great deal of circumspection.” But a combination of “minor transgressions” occurred in this case crossed the line, held Justice Granosik in Abicidan c. Shakepay inc., 2024 QCCS 11.
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Class action motion judges facing pushback from Quebec Appeal Court
The Quebec Court of Appeal has overturned no less than eight lower court decisions over the past year that denied class action certification, signaling a possible discord that shows little sign of abating between motion judges more likely to cast a critical eye and the higher court intent on strictly adhering to case law and the teachings of the Supreme Court of Canada, according to class action experts.
With the Quebec justice system under severe strain, beset by underfunding and vexed by a dire shortage of court personnel, with more than 20 per cent of employees resigning in a year, leaving many Quebec judges compelled to share judicial assistants, class action lawyers speculate that motion judges are taking a harder line on the viability of class actions, all the while taking into consideration the impact it would have on an overtaxed justice system. “Perhaps what is happening is that trial judges have a more concrete understanding of the fact that there are already too many class actions going on in Quebec, be it at the authorization stage or at the trial level,” said Éric Préfontaine, a Montreal class action defence lawyer with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. “There seems to be some kind of disconnect between the assessment some motion judges make” and the Appeal Court.
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Plaintiff class action legal fees under the microscope
A $28-million settlement reached with a Catholic religious order in a sexual abuse class action was rejected by Quebec Superior Court because of the high legal fees associated with the agreement, the second Quebec class action settlement in the past month whose legal fees have been the subject of a critical assessment.
The decision by Quebec Superior Court Justice Thomas Davis to rebuff a settlement for more than 375 alleged victims of sexual assaults committed by members and employees of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur of Canada follows on the heels of a ruling in mid-June by Quebec Superior Court Justice Daniel Dumais to curb plaintiff class action legal fees by 20 per cent in the so-called Dieselgate scandal in which German carmaker Volkswagen AG violated Canadian emissions standards.
The decisions underline that settlement approvals are not a rubber stamping exercise, demonstrate that the courts will take into account the Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers (Code) when examining plaintiff class action legal fees, reiterate the importance of transparency vis-à-vis clients even in a class action setting, and illustrate why settlement approvals should be separate from and not contingent on class counsel fee approvals, according to class action legal experts.
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Justiciability a major hurdle for climate change lawsuits, assert legal experts
A proposed climate change class action suit by a Montreal environment group against the federal government was denied certification by the Quebec Court of Appeal after it held that it was not justiciable, the latest in a series of climate change litigation cases that have been thwarted by the justiciability doctrine, prompting questions over the successful viability of using broadly framed Charter arguments in climate justice suits in Canada. -
Racial profiling cases winding its way through Quebec courts
A Quebec man who was issued a ticket for accusing a police officer of being a racist after being stopped was acquitted by a municipal court judge, the latest in a series of cases dealing with racial profiling that recently wound its way through Quebec courts.
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Judge denies class action certification over Equifax data breach
A class action suit that sought compensatory and punitive damages against credit-reporting company Equifax Inc. following a massive global data breach that affected more than 143 million people worldwide, including 19,000 Canadians, was refused certification after Quebec Superior Court held that Quebec law does not recognize compensatory damages for data breaches.The decision, the latest of a rapidly growing body of Quebec jurisprudence dealing with security breaches, underlines that being the victim of a data breach is insufficient to claim damages even though there is prime facie evidence that a fault occurred, according to class action lawyers.
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Telus overcharged clients who were billed early cancellation fees, rules Quebec appeal court
Telus became the third Canadian telecommunication giant ordered to pay clients who paid excessive cancellation fees after the Quebec Court of Appeal partially overturned a lower court decision that dismissed the class action.
