Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Validity and binding force of a recreational vehicle rental contract and the unilateral cancellation by the lessor shortly before performance
• Insufficiency of evidence to establish force majeure where repairs and maintenance did not make performance impossible before the scheduled departure
• Weight given to documentary evidence (invoices, emails, platform communications) in determining the true motive for cancellation—financial considerations versus genuine impossibility
• Direct and immediate causal link between the wrongful cancellation and the plaintiffs’ moral, financial, and organizational prejudice tied to a long-planned sabbatical trip
• Limits on recovery of legal consultation fees and tracing costs in small claims, given Quebec law on compensable legal costs and the conduct of the plaintiffs
• Ancillary liability of the online rental platform for supporting the cancellation and contributing to the plaintiffs’ loss, despite the absence of detailed proof of its contractual obligations

Facts and background of the dispute

Isabelle Tousignant and Alain Bédard planned a long sabbatical trip to the western United States, specifically Utah, that had been in preparation for approximately five years. To carry out this project, they reserved a class C motorhome through RVezy, an online platform that connects private RV owners with travellers for short-term rentals. The motorhome belonged to individual owner Khristine Lahaie. The rental period was set from 9 April to 14 May 2023, and the couple paid $5,439 through the platform in anticipation of their extended road trip. At the time of these events, RVezy’s website allowed users to search, reserve, and pay for rentals, acting as an intermediary between owners and renters rather than as the owner of the vehicles itself. Its internal policies included cancellation and pricing rules for hosts, but it did not guarantee the actual availability of specific units.

Events leading to the cancellation

On 16 March 2023, several weeks before the planned departure, Lahaie wrote to Tousignant and Bédard to announce that the contract might have to be either cancelled or renegotiated at a higher price. She cited significant repair and maintenance costs incurred after the RV’s return from a trip to Florida, mentioning expenses such as new tires, bearings, alignment and a broken water pump. She proposed an additional $2,500 on top of the originally agreed rental price and demanded a response within 24 hours. Faced with this sudden and substantial price increase, the couple refused to renegotiate. On 20 March 2023, Lahaie unilaterally cancelled the rental rather than honour the existing reservation at the agreed price. At that time, the couple were on holiday in the Bahamas and learned of the cancellation while abroad, causing significant stress and disruption. A friend hosting them at the time later confirmed their distress and the efforts they undertook to find alternative solutions for their upcoming trip.

Role of the online platform and communications

In parallel, Tousignant and Bédard repeatedly contacted RVezy seeking assistance to enforce the reservation. RVezy informed them that it could not guarantee availability of vehicles listed on its platform and that its policy allowed owners to modify prices or cancel reservations. In this case, RVezy stated it would either refund them in full or provide a credit with a 10% bonus to be applied to a replacement rental, again booked through the platform. The replacement options proposed were not comparable in terms of price or the type of vehicle, and the plaintiffs declined these alternatives. Ultimately, they received a full refund of the $5,439 they had paid. RVezy also decided not to apply its usual $100 cancellation fee to Lahaie, concluding that her reasons for cancelling were valid under its internal policy. The policy documents showed that, from the platform’s perspective, an owner might be excused from penalties in certain cases of repairs or mechanical issues; however, these internal criteria were distinct from the civil law standards governing contractual obligations and force majeure between the parties.

Evidence regarding repairs, maintenance, and availability

Lahaie defended the claim primarily by arguing that the contract had become impossible to perform due to necessary repairs, invoking the concept of force majeure. She produced invoices showing work on tires and other maintenance items, as well as a later invoice for repairs following an infiltration of water and damage to the RV’s water pump and interior paneling. The evidence demonstrated that the vehicle had been rented to another customer in early March 2023 and that some repairs were carried out after that rental, including work on the tires and pump. Crucially, some of these repairs were completed before 16 March, the date when Lahaie first raised the possibility of cancelling or renegotiating the contract. A further invoice, dated 24 April 2023, related to repair of pipes damaged by freezing, replacement of part of the water pump and remediation of interior water damage to wall covering, after the period when she had already cancelled the plaintiffs’ reservation. Lahaie and her partner maintained that they only became aware of the water infiltration on 20 March 2023 and that this discovery prompted the decision to cancel. The plaintiffs, for their part, introduced screenshots indicating that the RV appeared as available on RVezy’s website for the same dates at a significantly higher price. This suggested that the real motivation may have been financial: to increase profitability by relisting at a higher rate rather than an inability to make the vehicle available.

Legal analysis of contractual obligations and force majeure

The court began by reaffirming the civil law principles governing contracts under the Civil Code of Québec. A contract is a meeting of wills by which one person obliges herself toward another to perform a prestation, and it creates binding obligations between the parties once validly formed. A party cannot unilaterally terminate, modify, or revoke a contract except for reasons recognized by law or by mutual agreement. Quebec law does allow a debtor to be released from an obligation if performance becomes impossible due to force majeure—an unforeseeable and irresistible event, external to the parties and not attributable to the debtor. The burden of proving force majeure lies on the party invoking it. Applying these rules, the court held that Lahaie had unilaterally cancelled a validly formed contract. The central issue was whether the repairs and condition of the RV met the legal criteria for force majeure. The judge concluded they did not. Routine maintenance and repairs, even if necessary, are not in themselves unforeseeable or irresistible events. The work on tires and the pump constituted either normal maintenance or correctable defects that did not make performance absolutely impossible. Moreover, nothing in the record established that all required work could not have been completed before the scheduled departure date of 9 April 2023. The court emphasized that an earlier renter had been compensated with a $50 discount for pump-related issues, showing that the RV remained usable despite the problem. The later water infiltration and interior repair, dealt with in the April invoice, also did not establish a sudden and insurmountable impossibility of performance in March. Overall, the evidence did not satisfy the stringent requirements of extériorité, non-imputabilité, imprévisibilité, irrésistibilité and absolute impossibility of performance that define a force majeure event under Quebec jurisprudence.

Financial motivation and the real cause of cancellation

The judge placed particular weight on Lahaie’s own written communications. In her 16 March email, she emphasised the high cost of recent maintenance and explained that the original rental rate was not “viable,” stating that it would cause her to lose money. She explicitly proposed either cancelling the trip to avoid “using the RV unnecessarily” and instead seeking other local rentals, or renegotiating the price upwards within what she described as a reasonable range. Her 20 March message reiterated that, given the accumulated expenses, she perceived a real risk of having to spend even more with no return on the upcoming rental, and that it was more prudent to cancel to protect her vehicle. Taken together, these emails led the court to infer that profitability concerns, rather than a true impossibility of performance, were driving the cancellation. The court stated that no convincing evidence supported the existence of an event that would qualify as force majeure. Accordingly, Lahaie remained bound to perform, and her refusal constituted a contractual fault.

Assessment of damages claimed by the plaintiffs

Tousignant and Bédard sought a total of $9,771.31 from Lahaie, divided among several heads of damage: loss of vacation calculated by reference to their income, moral damages, inconvenience related to transporting their belongings, legal consultation fees, and fees paid to an address-locating service. Lahaie argued that they might have secured a better rate for a replacement rental and that the other items were subjective or exaggerated. The court disagreed with her position that the plaintiffs had not truly suffered loss. It accepted that their trip to the American West had to be shortened and reorganized, including a change of departure point for the RV portion of the journey, and that these changes caused real disruption. The judge also recognized the stress and anxiety associated with a last-minute cancellation of a long-awaited and carefully planned sabbatical, confirmed by the testimony of their friend in the Bahamas. These harms—trouble, inconvenience, and emotional upset—were found to be an immediate and direct consequence of Lahaie’s wrongful failure to perform the rental contract. Balancing all circumstances, however, the court did not grant the full amount claimed. Instead, it considered a global award of $3,000 against Lahaie to be fair and reasonable compensation for the couple’s troubles and inconveniences. It rejected the address-tracing costs on the basis that no attempts had been made to obtain Lahaie’s address directly from her before hiring a locating service. It also dismissed legal consultation fees, reiterating the general rule in Quebec that a party cannot ordinarily be indemnified for its counsel’s professional fees as damages beyond the prescribed costs and interest.

Liability of the online platform and contribution to damages

The claim against RVezy was more limited in scope. The court noted that the evidence did not clearly establish the precise contractual obligations the platform owed to the plaintiffs; in other words, the exact content of their contract with RVezy was not proved and could not be presumed. Nonetheless, the record showed that RVezy had supported Lahaie’s position, telling the plaintiffs that the cancellation was justified and explaining that its policies allowed owners to cancel and change prices. By endorsing Lahaie’s decision in this way, the platform contributed to the harm suffered by Tousignant and Bédard, who relied on those assurances during a critical period when they were scrambling to salvage their travel plans. Although its role was secondary compared to that of the owner-lessor, the court considered that RVezy bore some responsibility for the plaintiffs’ loss and should be held to a modest monetary contribution. It therefore ordered RVezy to pay $400 to the plaintiffs, a figure reflecting its limited but real participation in the chain of events that led to the disruption of their sabbatical.

Overall outcome and monetary awards

In the final analysis, the court held that Lahaie had wrongfully cancelled a binding rental contract without proving any force majeure and that the plaintiffs were entitled to damages for the immediate and direct consequences of that breach. It awarded Tousignant and Bédard $3,000 in damages against Lahaie, plus legal interest at the statutory rate and the additional indemnity provided by article 1619 of the Civil Code of Québec from 28 December 2023, the date she was put in default. It also condemned RVezy Inc. to pay them $400, with the same interest and additional indemnity from that date, and granted $230 in court costs payable by both defendants. In total, the successful parties—plaintiffs Isabelle Tousignant and Alain Bédard—obtained principal monetary relief of $3,630, exclusive of interest and the statutory additional indemnity, which could not be quantified precisely on the face of the judgment.