Montréal Office to Argue Unprecedented Case before the Supreme Court of Canada

Published: Thursday, 8 July 2010

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A team of Davis lawyers, led by Hubert Sibre and Annie Claude Beauchemin of the Montréal office, will argue an unprecedented consumer law case before the Supreme Court of Canada.

In the case of Richard vs. Time Inc., Davis client, Mr. Jean-Marc Richard, pursued legal action against Time Inc. in light of the content of a Sweepstakes confirmation he received through the mail. The documents received from Time indicated that Mr. Richard was the winner of a substantial amount. It was argued before the court that either the documents confirmed that Mr. Richard was the winner and thus entitled him to receive the winning price or that it was voluntarily drafted to give the strong impression that he was the winner in order to influence the consumer to do business with Time.

The Superior Court of Québec issued a judgment awarding $100,000 of punitive damages against Time. However, the Court of Appeal disagreed with the initial ruling and reversed the first instance of the decision. In its decision, the Court of Appeal of Québec did change the definition of the average consumer necessary to interpret the documents of Time in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act.

The case will be heard before the Supreme Court of Canada in January 2011 with the following issues to be debated: (1) definition of the "average" consumer upon which is based the analysis of the document, (2) whether or not the document from Time was misleading, and (3) what would be the criteria to establish a proper amount of punitive damages in similar situations.