Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Limitation period for a personal action (three-year prescription plus COVID suspension and 60-day grace for service) and whether late service rendered the claim prescribed.
• Effect of alleged service difficulties and late discovery of a possible claim on the running and interruption of prescription.
• Characterisation of all claimed heads of loss (physical, psychological, economic, punitive) as “préjudice corporel” within the exclusive no-fault regime of the Loi sur l’assurance automobile (LAA).
• Scope of the statutory bar in article 83.57 LAA and whether it precludes civil liability and contractual claims against an automobile manufacturer for injuries from a road accident.
• Attempt to invoke Quebec and Canadian Charter rights (life, integrity, liberty) and alleged concealment of safety defects to circumvent the LAA scheme.
• Application of the stringent test on a motion in irrecevabilité to dismiss an action that is both prescribed and manifestly unfounded at first sight.

Facts of the case and the accident
Patricia Roberge leased a 2018 GMC Terrain on 12 March 2018. The vehicle was manufactured by Compagnie General Motors du Canada (GMC) and General Motors Corporation. On 10 May 2019, she was involved in a serious road accident while driving this vehicle. She sustained multiple injuries and alleges lasting physical and psychological sequelae that significantly impair her quality of life. A central factual allegation is that the airbags in the GMC Terrain did not deploy during the collision. Roberge claims that the vehicle was required to comply with applicable Canadian safety standards and that the airbags’ failure reflects a safety defect. She further alleges that GMC had been aware since at least 2001 that the airbag deployment switch (commutateur) was defective but failed to take timely steps to warn users and, instead, allegedly concealed crucial information about the risk. According to her pleadings, if the defect had been addressed or disclosed, the accident’s consequences for her would have been less severe.

Procedural history and nature of the claims
Roberge instituted proceedings by way of a modified originating application, seeking damages of 6,662,118.91 dollars with legal interest from GMC and General Motors Corporation. She served the originating application on GMC on 24 February 2023. Her allegations sound in both extra-contractual and contractual liability. In delict, she claims that GMC knew of a safety defect in the airbag system yet failed to warn consumers or recall the vehicles, thereby breaching its duty of care and causing her bodily injury and associated losses. In contract, she alleges that by providing a vehicle that was not safe, GMC breached its obligations as manufacturer and, effectively, as a party in the chain of contracts linked to her lease of the vehicle. She also advances a constitutional and quasi-constitutional dimension: she argues that GMC cannot “hide” behind the no-fault regime created by the LAA because, by allegedly concealing crucial safety information, it violated her rights to life, integrity and liberty protected under both the Quebec Charter and the Canadian Charter. On this basis, she seeks compensation for losses she says were not covered by the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) under the statutory scheme. GMC responded with a motion in irrecevabilité under article 168, al. 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, asking the Superior Court to dismiss the action at the preliminary stage. GMC raised two principal grounds: first, that the action was prescribed; and second, that in any event article 83.57 LAA bars civil actions in respect of bodily injury arising from a road accident because the LAA provides an exclusive no-fault indemnity regime administered by the SAAQ.

Issues of prescription and delay
The Court first examined whether Roberge’s claim against GMC was time-barred. The accident occurred on 10 May 2019. Under article 2925 of the Civil Code of Québec, an action to enforce a personal right that is not subject to a special prescriptive period is prescribed by three years. On its face, this required that any civil action arising from the accident be instituted by 10 May 2022. The COVID-19 emergency, however, led to a 169-day suspension of prescription and procedural delays by government decree. When that suspension is factored in, the Court calculated that the prescriptive period expired on 27 October 2022. Under article 2892 C.c.Q., the filing of an originating application before expiry of prescription interrupts prescription, provided that the application is served on the defendant no later than 60 days after the expiry of the prescriptive period. Thus, from 27 October 2022, Roberge had a further 60 days to serve GMC, giving her until 27 December 2022 to effect service. She filed her originating application with the Court on 10 May 2022, exactly three years after the accident, but did not serve it on GMC until 24 February 2023, well beyond both the three-year period as extended by the COVID suspension and the 60-day grace period for service. Roberge attempted to justify the late service by invoking difficulties related to telework and problems in serving the related entity General Motors Corporation in the United States. The Court held that any service difficulty concerned the American entity, not GMC in Canada, and therefore did not excuse the failure to serve GMC within the statutory time limits. She also alleged that she did not realise within the first year after the accident that she had a potential civil claim. The Court was not persuaded. It noted that her filing of the application exactly three years to the day after the accident showed she was sufficiently aware of the need to act within a prescriptive period. There was no impossibility of acting that could suspend or delay prescription under the applicable rules. Because the application was not served on GMC within the 60-day period mandated by article 2892 C.c.Q., the interruption of prescription failed and the right of action was deemed prescribed. The Court characterised this as a fatal defect: the omission to respect the service deadline resulted in forfeiture of the recourse.

Interaction with Quebec’s no-fault automobile insurance regime
The Court then turned to the substantive bar arising from Quebec’s no-fault automobile insurance scheme under the LAA. Drawing on the Court of Appeal decision in Productions Pram and the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Godbout c. Pagé, the judge reiterated that the LAA must be given a broad and liberal interpretation, provided that interpretation remains plausible and consistent with the statute’s language. The Supreme Court in Godbout confirmed that where bodily injury is “caused in an accident” involving an automobile, the relevant question is whether there is a plausible, logical and sufficiently close connection between the accident and the bodily injury, even if there are subsequent faults by third parties. So long as that connection exists, bodily injury and its sequelae fall under the LAA regime, and the victim’s recourse is exclusively against the SAAQ for the indemnities provided by statute. Article 83.57(1) LAA explicitly declares that the statutory indemnities “take the place of all rights and remedies in respect of bodily injury” and that “no action in that respect shall be admitted before any court.” Quebec case law has interpreted “préjudice corporel” broadly to include not only physical injury but also psychological harm, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of earning capacity, various associated expenses and even certain consequential pecuniary losses. The Court also referred to more recent authority confirming that moral and exemplary damages fall within the notion of bodily injury if they are linked to injuries suffered in an automobile accident; they cannot be pursued outside the LAA framework where the statutory scheme applies. Applying these principles, the judge examined the heads of damages claimed by Roberge: repair, rental and insurance costs relating to the vehicle; punitive damages calculated as double the “disbursements”; damages for loss of enjoyment; loss of income; psychological damages; and physical damages. All of these were closely tied to the automobile accident and to the bodily injuries she suffered as a result. On the Court’s reading of the authorities, every head of loss she pleaded formed part of her bodily injury within the meaning of article 83.57 LAA. As a result, any recourse for these losses lay exclusively with the SAAQ under the statutory no-fault scheme. The fact that Roberge framed her claim in terms of contractual breach and Charter-based violations of life, integrity and liberty did not alter the essential character of her losses as bodily injury arising from a road accident involving an automobile. The LAA’s bar therefore applied notwithstanding the seriousness of her allegations of concealment of safety information or constitutional arguments.

Decision and overall outcome
In assessing GMC’s motion in irrecevabilité, the Court recalled the principles applicable to such motions. On such a motion, the material factual allegations in the originating application, together with the exhibits, are taken as true, but the plaintiff’s legal characterisation of those facts is not. The Court’s task is not to weigh the evidence or predict the likelihood of success; it must instead determine whether, assuming the facts to be proven, they could give rise in law to the remedies claimed. There is a prudence principle: in cases of doubt, the plaintiff should normally be allowed to proceed to a trial on the merits. However, this prudence does not preclude the early dismissal of a claim that is clearly doomed to fail; doing so serves both the parties’ interests and the proper administration of justice. Applied here, even taking Roberge’s factual narrative as true—including the non-deployment of airbags, the alleged known defect since 2001 and the alleged concealment by GMC—the Court found the action against GMC to be both prescribed and substantively barred by the LAA. The prescriptive defect alone rendered the claim irrecevable, and, independently, the exclusivity of the LAA regime meant that the civil courts lacked jurisdiction to award the damages she sought for bodily injury and related losses. Accordingly, the Superior Court allowed GMC’s motion in irrecevabilité, dismissed Roberge’s modified originating application as against Compagnie General Motors du Canada and ordered costs against her (“avec frais de justice”). GMC is therefore the successful party. No compensatory, punitive or other damages were awarded to Roberge, and while costs were granted in principle in favour of GMC, the judgment does not specify any exact monetary amount, which would be determined through the usual taxation of costs rather than in a fixed sum in this decision.