Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Jurisdiction shifted from the Superior Court to the Court of Québec after the judicial sale of the property eliminated the legal hypothec and left only personal monetary claims below the Superior Court’s monetary threshold.
• Central factual dispute concerns whether claimed construction “extras” were validly authorized and whether significant unfinished or defective work remained under the preliminary contract of sale.
• The effect of prior GCR (Garantie construction résidentielle) arbitration and its decision is contested, particularly as to which construction issues were finally resolved and which claims remained open.
• Procedurally, both sides heavily amended their pleadings, raising questions about proper notice, fairness to an absent, unrepresented co-plaintiff, and the impact of amendments on jurisdiction and default.
• Defendants’ large counterclaim for damages based on alleged abusive proceedings required scrutiny of the link between claimed legal fees and the specific litigation, including whether those fees were over-inclusive or inflated.
• A separate attempt to have the plaintiffs declared vexatious litigants failed for lack of relevant, probative evidence tying their broader litigation history to any legal prejudice suffered by the defendants.

Background and contractual framework

In 2019, homebuyers Stéphane Leith and Carole Barabé entered into a preliminary contract with 9361-5177 Québec inc. for the purchase of a newly constructed single-family home. The transaction was tied to Quebec’s new-home warranty regime through a Garantie construction résidentielle (GCR) warranty contract that governed certain construction defects and completion obligations. The preliminary contract set out the baseline scope of work and price, while the warranty regime provided a dispute resolution mechanism and coverage for eligible defects and incomplete items.
Construction began after a building permit issued in March 2019, and despite disagreements, the parties signed the notarial deed of sale on 22 July 2019. Leith and Barabé paid the purchase price of $445,000, financed in part by a first-rank hypothecary loan from National Bank of Canada (BNC). The deed expressly confirmed that 9361 sold the property free of hypothecs but preserved the parties’ rights and recourses regarding extras and late-delivery penalties. This clause became important later, as it allowed both sides to continue litigating monetary issues related to the construction even after title transferred.

Emergence of construction and payment disputes

Following the sale, the relationship deteriorated further. Leith and Barabé claimed that 9361 had not fully performed the preliminary contract, asserting there were outstanding or defective works and undelivered materials totaling $46,295.21, plus $5,300 in expenses they said were caused by late delivery of the home. They later also sought $10,000 in general damages.
On the other side, 9361 contended that various additional works and materials were extras requested by the buyers, outside the original scope, and that these remained unpaid. It claimed $30,020.03 for these alleged extras. The factual core of the monetary dispute was therefore twofold: whether the unfinished or non-conforming items were contractual obligations or already compensated via the warranty process, and whether the extras were in fact authorized, either verbally or in writing, by the buyers.

Hypothecary remedies and the legal hypothec of construction

Shortly after the sale, on 29 July 2019, 9361 published a legal hypothec of persons having taken part in the construction against the property, followed by a pre-notice of exercise the next day for $33,020.03 plus interest and costs. These steps escalated the dispute from a private construction quarrel to a real rights fight affecting the immovable itself.
Leith and Barabé responded with a Superior Court application seeking cancellation (radiation) of the published construction hypothec and the pre-notice, as well as monetary relief for incompleted works, late-delivery penalties, damages, and eventually an amount equivalent to the hypothec itself. They also brought in Habitat Nueva inc. as an additional defendant, alleging it shared responsibility for the construction shortcomings.
For their part, the defendants filed a defence and counterclaim combining several remedies: they sought to enforce the hypothec by forced surrender (délaissement forcé), sale under judicial control, and an action on account; in the alternative, they claimed the price of the extras as a personal claim; and they advanced additional claims alleging abuse of process and quérulence, with substantial damages based on their legal fees.

Impact of the GCR warranty process

Before and alongside the court proceedings, the parties used the GCR mechanism. After notification by the buyers, GCR held an arbitration-like process and rendered a decision. Some of the buyers’ complaints were accepted and others rejected, with orders requiring 9361 to perform specific corrective works and pay some money.
The parties disagreed sharply on the legal effect of that GCR decision. The defendants argued it settled all construction-related disputes, precluding further court claims by the buyers. The buyers responded that the GCR process had not resolved everything, leaving certain claims still open, and that neither the deed of sale nor the warranty conditions barred their residual claims. Although the judgment recites these competing positions, the Superior Court ultimately did not decide the construction merits, because jurisdictional shifts and subsequent events intervened.

Judicial sale by the bank and transformation of the dispute

A major turning point came from a third party: BNC, the first-rank hypothecary creditor. Alleging that Leith and Barabé were in default on their loan obligations, BNC issued its own pre-notices of exercise and, by an August 2024 notice of sale under judicial control, forced a judicial sale of the property in February 2025 for $785,000.
Because the bank’s hypothec ranked ahead of the contractor’s construction hypothec, the judicial sale extinguished the legal hypothec registered by 9361 and mooted both sides’ real-rights remedies. With the property sold and the construction hypothec wiped out, there was no longer a live dispute over rights in rem worth more than $100,000—only competing personal monetary claims remained between the parties.

Amendments to pleadings and the jurisdictional consequence

Once the judicial sale had occurred, Leith and the defendants informed the Superior Court that their respective conclusions regarding cancellation or enforcement of the construction hypothec were now without object and withdrew them by consent. The defendants filed proof of the sale, and the buyers also withdrew their claim for the $33,020.03 amount framed as payment of the hypothec.
Leith then further narrowed the plaintiffs’ monetary claims. First, he confirmed a reduced total of $61,595.21 and, on the second hearing day, withdrew the $5,300 late-delivery claim and cut the unfinished-works claim from $46,295.21 to $22,648.44. Together with the separate $10,000 damages claim, the plaintiffs’ case was reduced to $32,648.44—squarely within the exclusive monetary jurisdiction of the Court of Québec.
On their side, the defendants orally “amended” their counterclaim for professional fees from about $45,600 to $87,402.24, supported by an updated bundle of invoices. The court held that this increase had not been properly notified to Barabé, who was in default and absent; therefore, as to her, the counterclaim remained fixed at $45,600.56, also below the Superior Court’s $100,000 threshold. The counterclaim for the extras (the $30,020.03 personal claim) likewise remained a relatively modest personal claim.

Self-represented parties and the court’s duty of assistance

Neither Leith nor Barabé was represented by counsel in this litigation, and Barabé did not attend the hearing at all. The court emphasized that self-representation is permitted but carries consequences: parties must still comply with substantive and procedural rules, and judges cannot create a more lenient parallel regime for them. At the same time, the court recognized its duty of assistance—not legal advice—to ensure unrepresented parties understand key procedural developments and that their basic procedural rights are respected.
This duty became especially important for Barabé, who was both absent and targeted by significant claims, including for alleged abuse and quérulence. The judge took steps to protect her fundamental rights, particularly when the defendants attempted to file sensitive materials from her family-law proceedings.

Abuse of procedure: scope and forum

The defendants’ counterclaim framed the plaintiffs’ lawsuit as an abusive proceeding under the Code of Civil Procedure, seeking a declaration of abuse and substantial compensatory damages based mainly on their own legal fees, which they claimed totaled $87,402.24 for defending and responding to the plaintiffs’ initiatives.
The court analyzed the legal standard for abuse, distinguishing between: a claim that is substantively abusive because it is manifestly ill-founded, frivolous, or dilatory, and an abuse of the right to litigate arising from the way a party conducts its proceedings. Here, the defendants did not allege procedural misconduct in the Superior Court proceedings themselves; rather, they alleged that the plaintiffs’ underlying monetary positions were so devoid of merit as to be abusive.
Critically, once the real-rights issues were withdrawn and only personal monetary claims remained—claims squarely within the jurisdiction of the Court of Québec—the Superior Court concluded it no longer had jurisdiction to pronounce on whether those personal claims were abusive. To decide the abuse issue would require passing on the merits of claims and defences that belong, after the amendments, to the Court of Québec.
Accordingly, the court held that the abuse-of-procedure counterclaim, including the claimed $87,402.24 (as against Leith) and $45,600.56 (as against Barabé), must follow the principal personal claims to the Court of Québec as a counterclaim within that court’s concurrent jurisdiction. It noted, in passing, that many billed items appeared inflated or unrelated (e.g., work on other files, collection of materials for the quérulence claim, and pre-litigation work predating the action), but it left the ultimate determination to the court with jurisdiction over the merits of the parties’ financial dispute.

Attempted declaration of quérulence

Separate from the abuse-of-procedure counterclaim, the defendants sought to have Leith and Barabé declared vexatious litigants (plaideurs quérulents) under article 55 C.p.c. and the Superior Court’s civil practice rules. This is an extraordinary remedy that can lead to broad filing restrictions in both the Superior Court and the Court of Québec, and it falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Superior Court regardless of monetary value.
To support this request, the defendants assembled a substantial annex of prior and parallel proceedings involving primarily Barabé: labour disputes, a long-running family-law “saga,” and insolvency matters, as well as various small-claims and other civil files. They argued that this litigation history, together with the present construction dispute, showed a pattern of excessive, unreasonable resort to the courts.
The judge applied the established criteria for quérulence: repetitive, unfounded, or abusive proceedings; misuse of judicial or administrative processes to harass; and a pattern of litigation that is disproportionate and disconnected from a genuine quest for justice. He further stressed that a party seeking such a declaration must have a real, direct legal interest in the remedy: it is not enough to point to how the other party may have behaved with third parties in unrelated disputes.

Privacy, confidentiality, and inadmissible family-law material

A significant evidentiary controversy arose when the defendants tried to file family-law judgments and documents from Barabé’s divorce/parenting proceedings, complete with identifying information for the parties involved. The Superior Court, on its own initiative, questioned the relevance and admissibility of these materials and invoked the protective rules in articles 15 and 16 C.p.c., which safeguard confidentiality in family-law matters.
The defendants argued that Barabé had effectively waived confidentiality by using those judgments in her insolvency proceedings, and that they were therefore free to deploy the same material in this construction case. The court rejected that position, finding no valid waiver and holding that a litigant’s use of her own confidential judgments in another context does not open the door for unrelated parties to unilaterally publicize or weaponize them. The family-law documents were ruled both irrelevant and inadmissible.
This episode reinforced the judge’s view that the quérulence application itself was overreaching and disproportionate, particularly given Barabé’s absence and self-represented status. The defendants had effectively appointed themselves guardians of the justice system, combing through unrelated files without establishing any meaningful connection to their own interests in the construction dispute.

Findings on quérulence and proportionality

On the evidentiary record, the court concluded that:

• The defendants failed to show any conduct by Leith or Barabé in this construction matter that met the threshold for vexatious litigation.
• The limited incidents involving the defendants (for example, Barabé’s difficult behavior at notarial meetings and during a GCR hearing) showed a demanding and sometimes disruptive litigant but did not amount to legal quérulence, particularly since the GCR process actually resulted in some findings in the buyers’ favor.
• The many external labour, family, and insolvency files had no probative value in this case and did not establish a pattern of vexatious conduct toward these defendants or in relation to this immovable.
• The extensive and largely irrelevant use of those other files by the defendants themselves raised concerns about proportionality and appropriate litigation behavior, though the court ultimately declined to formally label their conduct abusive.
  As a result, the Superior Court rejected in full the defendants’ application for a declaration that either plaintiff was a vexatious litigant.

Disposition, costs, and overall outcome

In the end, the Superior Court made no determination on the merits of the parties’ competing monetary claims. It ordered that Leith and Barabé’s personal claims of $22,648.44 and $10,000 be referred to the Court of Québec, along with the defendants’ counterclaims: (i) $30,020.03 for alleged construction extras and (ii) the abuse-of-procedure counterclaim, quantified at $87,402.24 against Leith and $45,600.56 against Barabé. The court expressly grounded these transfers on the monetary jurisdiction rules and made no findings on the substantive validity of any party’s financial claim.
On the only issue it did decide—the request for a declaration of quérulence—the court sided with the plaintiffs, dismissing the defendants’ application as unfounded and disproportionate, and ordering that each party bear its own costs. There was no monetary award, damages order, or costs recovery in favor of any party at this stage; the total amount of any future award, if any, will depend entirely on subsequent proceedings in the Court of Québec and therefore cannot be determined from this judgment alone.