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.
class action
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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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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. -
Court certifies class action regarding misclassification of lawyers as independent contractors
In a decision that underlines the changing employment landscape, a class action against Deloitte LLP involving document reviewers has been certified by an Ontario court. -
Norbourg class action good business for lawyers
A couple of weeks after an agreement in principle was reached in the Norbourg class action suit, opening the door for thousands of investors to recover nearly all the money they lost in one of the biggest investment frauds in the country, Quebec’s securities regulator is facing an expensive legal tab.
The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) has incurred $12 million in legal expenses to defend itself in the Norbourg scandal, according to a French-language television network. The law firm Heenan Blaikie ostensibly charged $9.275 million.
Over the past five years, five government bodies hired the services of private-sector lawyers at a cost of $51.9 million. Investissement Quebec spent $1.2 million, utility giant Hydro-Quebec $9.2 million, the Société générale de financement $9.8 million, the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec $15.4 million — and the AMF $16.4 million.
Marc Lajoie, head of the Association des juristes de l’État (AJE), a union representing nearly 1,000 lawyers, notaries, and other legal professionals now on strike, does not understand.
“If they don’t have the money for prosecutors and government lawyers, then they surely don’t have the means to reach out to the private sector to hire people for cases,” Lajoie told me recently. “All we’re asking is that our salaries be pegged to the Canadian average.”
