At the end of March, the City of Quebec dropped the collective actions carried out on behalf of dozens of demonstrators arrested in the Old Capital during the “maple spring” of 2012.
A few weeks after the City of Montreal paid 6 million to settle similar lawsuits against it, Quebec will be better off.
“The actions are dismissed as prescribed,” ruled Justice Simon Hébert of the Superior Court of Quebec, in a decision dated March 28. In Quebec, an action for damages against a municipality must be instituted within six months of the alleged events. These proceedings were filed three years after the events. “This conclusion alone seals the fate of the Remedies. »
Judge Hébert thus signed the death warrant for three class actions related to the mass arrests that occurred on May 23, May 28 and June 5, 2012.
The magistrate nevertheless considered the claims of the lawyers who represented the arrested persons. Their rights were violated because officers from the Quebec City Police Department handcuffed them all with plastic tie-wrap fasteners, according to Simon Hébert.
“The circumstances of the arrests do not support the conclusion that restraint measures are necessary. There is no indication that the crowd is hostile, even threatening, which would justify such a decision, quite the contrary,” wrote Judge Hébert. “In view of this, the Tribunal finds that there has been a violation of the protection granted by the Charter against arbitrary detention without this being justified since, without assessment of the circumstances specific to each demonstration, the imposition of restraint measures. »