Quebec man must reimburse province

Welfare benefits of $17,113 paid to immigrant spouse after couple divorced

Every month, Quebec judges and regulatory agencies issue dozens of rulings that, without making headlines, set the ground rules for how business is conducted in Quebec.

Here are a few of the offbeat and consequential rulings rendered in recent weeks. A man seeking to be freed from an obligation to reimburse the Quebec government $17,113 in welfare benefits paid to immigrants he sponsored got no relief in Superior Court.

The case involved a Quebec resident who pledged to provide for his fiancée and her two minor children for 10 years when they emigrated from Poland in 1989.

They married the next year, but in 1994, the woman left with the children and started collecting welfare. In 1997, they divorced.

The man argued he shouldn’t be held responsible financially, especially since his own circumstances changed and he ended up on welfare as well.

Judge Mark Peacock disagreed.

“The court can fully understand the frustration and disappointment of Mr. G.,” Peacock wrote. “He could not have foreseen that in the brief months after his wife became a Canadian citizen, that his wife would leave him taking her two children and that she and they would go on social assistance. The court understands from Mr. G. that they are now well-established … while it is he who remains on social assistance.

“However, the legislation and the contract clearly and squarely place that obligation on his shoulders, not those of Quebec taxpayers — whose government had no requirement to allow Mr. G.’s fiancée and her two children to enter the country without the guarantee, in the first place.

“This burden was voluntarily and willingly assumed by Mr. G. and the law in Quebec requires that Mr. G. bear the consequences. In his own writing, Mr. G. acknowledges a contract creates obligations on both parties; it is time for him to acknowledge his own responsibility.” A real estate agent who sued a homeowner for $135,000 after breaking an ankle while cleaning windows at his home failed to convince Superior Court Judge Alain Bolduc she was entitled to any compensation.

The 54-year-old woman, who was helping out a friend with a household cleaning business, fell from a ladder at the house in 2007. The ladder belonged to the 80-year-old homeowner.

Since the injury, the woman has worked only briefly.

Her argument was that the ladder was defective and constituted “a trap.”

The homeowner said he wasn’t present when she used it, had no way of knowing she would, and in any case the ladder was in good order.

Bolduc said the fall originated from a loss of balance, not a defect, and the woman did not prove any fault by the homeowner. Not only did he dismiss the claim, he awarded expert fees and costs to the homeowner. A woman who sued her spouse’s stamp-trading crony for sums allegedly due came away empty-handed in Quebec Court.

The woman’s spouse, now incapable of managing his own affairs because of dementia, had a stamp collection reportedly valued between $60,000 and $100,000 and traded valuable stamps with the other dealer from 1990 to 2009.

Stamps weren’t always paid for immediately, she said, and a running total was kept of sums that were owed.

She told the court that amount was $17,515.29, and said the defendant himself admitted to it when he met with her in the summer of 2010.

The defendant — who actually liquidated his former trading partner’s collection in 2009 and 2010 at the request of the woman — denied owing anything and said the sum actually represented the value of stamps he’d remitted several years earlier.

He said the first mention he heard of an outstanding debt came after his former trading partner had begun to lose his mental faculties.

With only the conflicting parties as witnesses, Judge Michel Pinsonnault said he had to weigh the credibility of the testimony and documents.

The woman had no master list of stamps allegedly provided and unpaid by the defendant, although there were invoices for all the other people with whom her spouse dealt in those years.

Pinsonnault said he also found her testimony evasive and inconsistent.

The other dealer, however, plausibly explained how he’d gradually reduced an initial debt of $17,515 in 2000 by supplying stamps to the other man over the following year, only to discover, with “disbelief,” he was being sued a decade later for that amount.

In the end, Pinsonnault concluded there was no compelling evidence of an outstanding debt.

“It is hard to believe that a successful businessman (such as the plaintiff ’s spouse) would have continued to do business throughout so many years with someone who never had money available when asked to pay an old debt of some $17,000,” he wrote.