Articles

When negotiating a commercial lease, it is in the landlord’s best interest to require that securities be provided by the prospective tenant in order to protect the landlord against the tenant’s failure to perform its obligations under the lease. A frequent cause of a tenant’s inability to perform its obligations is its insolvency or financial difficulties. It is important for landlords to know that the tenant’s bankruptcy, or the filing by the tenant of a notice of intention or a proposal under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (the “BIA”) can have the effect of negating the protection afforded by certain forms of security.

This article is a modified version of a case comment initially published in French by Éditions Yvon Blais in January 2018 (EYB2018REP2394).
As a general rule, pleadings and exhibits filed into court are public in nature and can be accessed by anyone, including journalists. In exceptional cases however, it is possible to remove them from public scrutiny, either by having them sealed or withdrawing them from the court record once the file has been closed. The Quebec Superior Court recently reconsidered its status as a court of record in its decision CIUSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal v. M.K.

The judicial saga of Google Inc. v. Equustek, which we summarized in our August 7 bulletin, has taken a new twist.

Quebec class actions need no introduction, although they are in perpetual refinement and constantly evolving. 2017, year 2 of Quebec’s refurbished class action regime further to the enactment of the new Code of Civil Procedure (“CCP”) was no exception to the previous years and brought many interesting developments to class proceedings in Quebec.

On December 13, 2017 the Quebec government published a draft regulation entitled “Environmental impact assessment and review procedure of certain projects” (the “Draft Regulation”) which is to replace the Regulation respecting environmental impact assessment and review. The Draft Regulation is a cornerstone of the implementation of the Act to amend the Environment Quality Act to modernize the environmental authorization scheme and to amend other legislative provisions, in particular to reform the governance of the Green Fund (“Bill 102”), which was assented to on March 23, 2017. The Draft Regulation is scheduled to come into force on March 23, 2018, subject to any amendments that may be made thereto following the consultation period ending on February 11, 2018.

This Fall, the Superior Court of Quebec rendered a decision against Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo! Canada Co. (“Yahoo!”) that exposes companies that offer free services to the application of consumer protection legislation, including the mandatory provisions of the Quebec Consumer Protection Act (“CPA”). In so doing, the Court declared inapplicable the choice of forum clauses in the terms of service accepted by users at the time of registration (Demers v. Yahoo! Inc., 2017 QCCS 4154). No appeal is sought in connection with this decision.