Price fixing lawsuit in Quebec denied access to evidence

A class action suit against oil companies and gas retailers in Quebec over alleged price fixing got more difficult on Thursday after the Supreme Court of Canada blocked it from accessing evidence from a criminal investigation into the same matter.

Yesterday’s ruling means lawyers for the claimants in the class action cannot interview the chief investigator of the Competition Bureau or get access to evidence, including 220,000 wiretap conversations.

“Disappointed,” said George Iny, executive director of the Automobile Protection Association, which is one of the parties behind the class action suits. “It will make our case a lot harder, but it’s still possible to do it.”

However Iny said the ruling pertains only to the discovery process of the case, which is the preliminary work to gather evidence for a possible trial. He said he hopes the claimants can still force the investigator to testify or produce documents during the actual trial.

Iny’s organization filed two class action suits after the Competition Bureau found evidence of price fixing among gas retailers in four cities in Quebec and charged 39 individuals and 15 companies. A handful of the criminal cases are still before the courts, but most of the accused pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, resulting in some jail sentences and fines.

Earlier this year, one of the class actions related to the four cities where charges were laid, resulted in a $17 million settlement with two-thirds of the companies involved.

The second suit, however, involves retailers and companies in 26 other cities, where the Competition Bureau investigated evidence of price fixing but did not lay any charges.

That is the suit at the heart of the Supreme Court ruling.