Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Existence and extent of Maintenance Nat Inc.’s indebtedness for 20 unpaid invoices totaling 12 616,29 $ for mechanical work performed on its vehicle fleet.
• Weight to be given to the plaintiff’s testimony and documentary invoices versus the defendant’s late, largely unsubstantiated objections to pricing and specific line items.
• Legal sufficiency of stopped cheques and partial-payment attempts, with unilateral “adjustments” by the defendant, as a defence to the full invoiced amounts.
• Impact of prior verbal cost estimates and long-standing payment practice since 2019 on the credibility of the plaintiff’s claim and the defendant’s later disputes.
• Consequences of the defendant’s failure to call the designated employee who allegedly received and approved cost estimates before the repairs were made.
• Whether complaints about price (rather than denial of services rendered) can extinguish or reduce a clear, documented contractual debt absent convincing proof of overbilling or error.

Factual background

The dispute arises out of a long-standing commercial relationship between two neighboring businesses in Montréal. 9447-1323 Québec Inc. operates a general mechanical services business, while Maintenance Nat Inc. is a cleaning company that owns and operates a fleet of ten trucks and two cars. Since 2019, the plaintiff has been performing maintenance and repair work on the defendant’s vehicles on a regular basis. For several years, from 2019 until October 2023, Maintenance Nat Inc. paid the invoices issued by 9447-1323 Québec Inc. The payments became less regular during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they nevertheless continued, and invoices were paid up to the end of October 2023. The present litigation concerns 20 invoices for work carried out between 10 November 2023 and 21 June 2024, which together total 12 616,29 $. These invoices relate to mechanical work, replacement parts, tires, and associated supplies and shop-related charges incurred in servicing the defendant’s fleet.

Procedural posture and issue in dispute

The case is heard before the Court of Québec, Small Claims Division, sitting in its Civil Chamber. 9447-1323 Québec Inc. brings an action to recover unpaid commercial invoices. The defendant does not deny that the plaintiff performed work on its vehicles; instead, it challenges parts of the invoicing and attempts to justify partial payments. The central legal question for the court is narrow but important: what amount, if any, does Maintenance Nat Inc. still owe to 9447-1323 Québec Inc. in respect of the 20 invoices at issue?

Burden and standard of proof in a civil claim

In resolving this dispute, the court begins by recalling the basic rules of civil evidence under the Civil Code of Québec. A party who wishes to assert a right bears the burden of proving the facts that support that right, while a party who claims that a right has been extinguished, nullified, or modified must prove the facts necessary to establish that assertion. The applicable standard is proof on a balance of probabilities: the evidence must be more convincing and probable than that of the opposing party, but it does not have to reach absolute certainty or a “beyond reasonable doubt” threshold. The judge also emphasizes that the assessment of witness credibility and the probative value of testimony fall squarely within the court’s discretion. The court weighs direct evidence, the surrounding circumstances, reasonable inferences, and presumptions in order to determine whether the alleged facts are more likely than not to have occurred. Applying these general evidentiary principles, the judge concludes that the evidence clearly establishes that the defendant is indebted to the plaintiff in the amount claimed.

Stopped cheques and unilateral invoice “adjustments”

A significant part of the evidentiary controversy concerns 13 of the 20 invoices. Maintenance Nat Inc. initially issued a series of postdated cheques, spread between 30 August 2024 and 30 November 2024, in partial payment of these 13 invoices. Some of those invoices were signed by the defendant’s president after he had unilaterally made handwritten or other “adjustments” to the amounts, which the plaintiff refused to accept. After issuing the cheques, the defendant stopped payment on them. The defendant’s adjustments followed no consistent or logical pattern. In some instances, Maintenance Nat Inc. refused to pay the “shop supplies” line item. In other cases, it claimed that the cost of a replacement part or purchased tires was too high and that the plaintiff could have obtained the items more cheaply online. Yet the defendant had never reserved any contractual right to veto the plaintiff’s choice of suppliers or to impose its own price sourcing criteria. The court also rejects an attempt by the defendant to show that one of the invoices (no. 59067) contains double billing. Overall, for these 13 invoices, the defendant’s position is not that services were not rendered, but rather that it is dissatisfied with the amount charged. The judge finds that this type of late-stage price complaint—unsupported by solid, objective evidence of overbilling and raised only once the defendant is in financial difficulty—does not displace the plaintiff’s clear proof of the debt.

Course of dealing and uncontradicted testimony

The court attaches particular weight to the way the parties had organized their dealings since 2019. According to the president of 9447-1323 Québec Inc., before carrying out repairs, he would provide an estimated cost of the work by telephone to a specifically designated person at Maintenance Nat Inc. This person, identified by the defendant’s president, would give advance authorization to proceed. This system of verbal estimates followed by authorization had been in place from the very beginning of the business relationship. Crucially, the designated employee from the defendant’s side did not testify at trial, so there was no direct evidence contradicting the plaintiff’s description of how work was approved. The president of the plaintiff company, along with his spouse who was responsible for accounts receivable, both testified consistently about the process and the services rendered. In the absence of any contrary testimony or documentation from the defendant, the court treats this evidence as credible and decisive. The judge concludes that the defendant’s objections are being raised belatedly, that the explanations put forward lack internal logic, and that they appear to be driven more by the defendant’s own economic difficulties at the time the services were rendered than by any genuine billing irregularities.

Remaining invoices and overall indebtedness

For the remaining 7 invoices (out of the total 20) that were not subject to unilateral “adjustments” by the defendant, the court’s analysis is straightforward. Three of these invoices bear the signature of the defendant’s president, which, in the judge’s view, is sufficient to establish that the charges are legitimate and accepted. As for the remaining four invoices, the evidence that the corresponding services were actually performed is uncontested; the defendant does not seriously dispute that the work was done. Taken together, the evidence for these seven invoices reinforces the overall picture: 9447-1323 Québec Inc. performed the mechanical work as invoiced, and Maintenance Nat Inc. has not discharged its burden to show that any part of the debt has been extinguished, reduced, or nullified.

Ruling and outcome

Having weighed the testimony and documentary proof against the defendant’s late and weak objections, the Court of Québec finds in favour of 9447-1323 Québec Inc. The action is allowed, and Maintenance Nat Inc. is ordered to pay the full principal amount claimed of 12 616,29 $, together with interest at the legal rate and the additional indemnity provided by article 1619 of the Civil Code of Québec from the date the claim was served (12 March 2025). The court also awards the plaintiff its judicial costs in the amount of 374 $. Thus, the successful party is 9447-1323 Québec Inc., and the total monetary relief ordered in its favour consists of 12 616,29 $ in principal plus 374 $ in costs, in addition to legal interest and the statutory indemnity, whose exact interest and indemnity amounts cannot be determined from the judgment text alone.