Players take city to court over lost field

A group of softball players campaigning to bring back a field in Jeanne-Mance Park has taken legal action against the city of Montreal.

Six softball players filed an application for judicial review in Quebec Superior Court on Friday, saying that the city removed the park’s northern softball diamond in an unlawful and unfair way.

“We feel like the city doesn’t intend to do anything to recognize that it was a mistake and to repair that mistake, so we feel like it’s our last chance,” said Marie-Claude Lacerte, one of the players who submitted the application.

The document the group filed in court tells the story of a community frustrated by broken promises and bureaucratic obscurity.

The city repeatedly told the softball players that they would bring back the park’s northern baseball diamond after it was disrupted by construction work last year, the players’ application says. They even pledged some improvements to the north field. The players were surprised, then, to be told in May that the city considered flying softballs too dangerous and planned to destroy the field.

The players say it is unfair that they only saw the city’s ballistics report after the field was destroyed, denying them the chance to respond to it. They also say that city officials directed them to file an access to information request to see the report rather than just handing it over. That sequence of events, the applicants say, violated their right to procedural fairness.

The principle of procedural fairness is that “people who are affected by a decision should have a chance to influence the decisionmaker,” said Nicholas Dodd, the group’s lawyer.

Under the judicial review process, people can apply for the court to review decisions made by any type of government decision-maker, explained Dodd.

“Fair enough, decisions change, but the decision changed without giving these people who had been promised the field was coming back any opportunity to respond to that change — or even to have that material that had caused the government to change course,” Dodd said.

The group also alleges that since Jeanne-Mance Park is designated a heritage site, the city broke the law by not seeking authorization from the Ministry of Culture and Communications before destroying part of the park.

The city must respond to the application within 15 days. The two parties then exchange evidence and may hear from witnesses before the case moves to a hearing.

Meanwhile, the city is in the midst of a series of public consultations on Jeanne-Mance Park.

Plateau Mont-Royal borough Mayor Luc Ferrandez’s office told the Montreal Gazette that they would not comment on the situation “since the matter has been brought to the court.”

“We keep an open line of communication with the group members. Our consultations on the master plan for Jeanne-Mance Park will still go ahead in the fall,” Ferrandez’s chief of staff said in an email.

The softball campaigners will participate in the consultations, Lacerte said, but they feel unclear about what the city will do with the results.

“Even though they listen to our opinion, they have no requirements to apply our ideas,” said Lacerte.