Every month, Quebec judges and regulatory agencies issue dozens of rulings that, without making headlines, set the ground rules for business in Quebec.
Here are a few of the offbeat and/or consequential rulings rendered in recent weeks.
The town of St. Nazaire will have to pay more than $600,000 in compensation after a woman was badly injured when scaffolding borrowed from the municipality collapsed in 2005.
The woman was in the process of painting her home when the scaffolding collapsed on her, fracturing her spine.
She and her husband sued the town, claiming it provided – free of charge to citizens – defective equipment. Their expert said some of the supporting pieces had been reworked and badly soldered.
The town, which had no policy governing the borrowing of equipment before the accident, argued the husband assembled it the wrong way.
Superior Court Judge Martin Dallaire ruled that, in making available to its citizens pieces that should have been scrapped instead of welded, the town had an obligation to warn the borrower of hidden defects.
But he conceded there was a possibility the scaffolding had been erected unevenly, contributing to the collapse, so he attributed 50 per cent responsibility to both parties, halving the claim.
That still will cost St. Nazaire more than $600,000 for the woman’s lost income (past and future) and ongoing physical problems, plus $35,000 for her husband’s loss of wages and enjoyment.
Having insurance doesn’t guarantee you’ll be compensated if your car gets stolen, a local couple has learned.
They sued their insurance company for $18,228 in replacement costs, expenses and damages after a 2002 Honda Civic they owned disappeared from the Galeries Laval one afternoon in August 2009.
The insurance company wouldn’t pay because it said they’d been untruthful in their claim, among other things failing to mention the car had been damaged in an accident a few weeks before, and Quebec Court Judge Alain Breault sided with the insurer.
Among the red flags for the insurance company had been the husband’s inability to remember the colour of a laptop computer he said he’d bought for his wife at a local store the previous month and left in the car.
The insurance company could find no evidence of the sale when it contacted the store, at which point the couple claimed it had been purchased from a friend they wouldn’t identify.
It also was skeptical about the husband’s claim that he’d replaced the vehicle’s hood himself after the accident a few weeks earlier when his 18-year-old daughter – who didn’t have a driver’s licence – took the car without their permission. He had no receipt to support that explanation.
The burden of proof in such cases is on the plaintiffs, Judge Breault said, and in this instance, they failed to back up their claims or refute the insurer’s contention of bad faith.
Chalk up another win for the insurance companies in what we’ll call the case of the “disappearing� tractor.
In 2009, a John Deere tractor was reported missing from a field by the man who’d leased it four years earlier.
The vehicle, initially valued at $175,000, was insured, with John Deere named on the policy as the lessor.
An insurance investigator dispatched to elucidate the reported theft got something unexpected: an admission from the man that he wasn’t sure the tractor had been stolen, he’d been “poorly advised� and he’d get it back himself.
That put a halt to any prospective indemnity from the insurance company. It said “wilful fault� was behind the disappearance.
Shortly afterward, the man’s agricultural business went bankrupt.
He admitted in court that he’d been led to believe the insurer would pay him if the vehicle disappeared, which would have helped pay his bills.
Unable to recoup the cost of the vehicle (which was never recovered) from the bankruptcy trustee, John Deere Ltd. sued the insurer for its current value, $92,160, claiming it was, in fact, an insured party.
Superior Court Judge Louis Lacoursière disagreed, saying the fact it was named as lessor/owner on the policy made it a beneficiary, but not the insured.
And the lessee’s false reporting of a theft nullified the coverage.
A man who tried to give his brother his share of a $203,000 co-property while insolvent had the sale overruled by the courts at the instigation of his soon-to-be-ex-wife.
The man still owed her $28,000 at the time, part of $271,010 in accumulated debts, and the real estate was his only asset.
Superior Court Judge Stéphane Sansfaçon said the man’s action “clearly favoured his brother to the detriment of his other creditors, among them the plaintiff,� voided the donation and placed a lien on the property, co-owned by the man’s mother and nephew.
pdelean@montrealgazette.com
Article source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/Wheels+Justice+Town+liable+injury+scaffold+lent/6984347/story.html