Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Justice Sandra Bouchard rejected a defense expert report for procedural and substantive irregularities under article 241 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

• The disputed report, dated August 12, 2022, was not disclosed to the plaintiff until February 12, 2026, nearly four years after it was written.

• Defendants failed to seek the court's authorization before producing this report outside the deadlines set in the fourth case protocol.
• Admissibility of expert evidence required proof of relevance, necessity, absence of an exclusionary rule, and the expert's sufficient qualification.
• Most of the report's 21 pages consisted of witness-interview summaries rather than technical analysis of the fire's cause.
• Ultimately the court found the report's conclusion self-evident and unnecessary to assist the trier of fact.

Facts of the case

This case arises from a fire that occurred on November 21, 2020, at a building located at 361 boulevard Vézina in Dolbeau-Mistassini, Quebec, owned by the plaintiff insurer's insured. L'Unique Assurances générales inc., acting on a subrogated basis, alleges the fire started from the ignition of combustible materials caused by overheating components of a heating unit in the building's attic, and that it resulted from the negligence of the defendant, Réfrigération Nordic inc. (2166-8405 Québec inc.), in performing its planned service contract. The defendants, along with Lloyd's underwriters, deny liability, maintaining the service contract was performed properly and attributing the fire's occurrence or worsening to negligent intervention by the plaintiff's insureds. Between January 8, 2024 and May 7, 2025, the parties agreed to three successive case protocols, each providing for a defense expert report on the fire's origin and probable cause, and a separate one on damage assessment. On October 23, 2025, while settling the deadlines of a fourth protocol, the defendants announced for the first time their intention to rely on an additional expert investigation into the circumstances of the fire. On February 12, 2026, the defendants formally disclosed two expert reports: D-1, a summary by engineer Michel Pitre of Origin dated February 3, 2026, and D-2, a "Further investigation" report by certified fire and explosion investigators Alain Harvey and Guy Bérubé of Services d'Experts Conseils Incendie, dated August 12, 2022 (with a mandate dated October 20, 2021).

Contractual and procedural provisions at issue

The judgment does not quote or discuss any insurance policy wording or the terms of the service contract itself; rather, the dispute centers on the Code of Civil Procedure provisions governing expert evidence. Article 241 C.p.c. allows a party to seek rejection of an expert report before trial for irregularity, serious error, or bias, provided the request is notified within ten days of learning the ground for rejection. Article 293 C.p.c. requires that an expert report be disclosed and filed within the deadlines set for the communication of evidence, subject to the court's permission to receive it late. The court also referenced articles 19 and 20 C.p.c. on case management and cooperation, and articles 148, 150, 293, 341 and 342 C.p.c. concerning adherence to agreed and prescribed deadlines.

Court's reasoning and analysis

The court applied the two-part framework from Excavations Payette ltée c. Ville de Montréal, 2022 QCCA 1393, and Cardinal c. Bonnaud, 2018 QCCA 1357: first assessing admissibility criteria (relevance, necessity to assist the trier of fact, absence of an exclusionary rule, and sufficient qualification of the expert), then, if met, weighing costs against benefits. The plaintiff did not contest D-1, the report on the fire's origin and cause, which the parties had already anticipated since the first protocol. However, the plaintiff sought rejection of D-2 on five grounds: its lateness, the plurality of experts addressing fire causation, the absence of court authorization, an alleged usurpation of the court's role, and serious prejudice. The defendants countered that the plaintiff was not taken by surprise since the report's subject matter had been flagged in the fourth protocol, that D-1 and D-2 addressed different questions, and that no exorbitant prejudice arose. The court found that the defendants offered no satisfactory explanation for waiting until February 2026 to disclose a report completed in August 2022, and confirmed they should have sought judicial authorization before filing it late, which they failed to do. While this procedural default alone was insufficient to justify rejection, the court noted it compounded other deficiencies. Reviewing the report's substance, the court observed that 19 of its 21 pages consisted of witness-interview summaries and photographs, and that its central conclusion — that faster firefighter intervention between 8:15 and 8:30 a.m. would have limited the damage that had escalated by 12:40 p.m., given the fire's initial pyrolysis effect — reflected common sense rather than specialized technical knowledge exceeding the judge's own competence.

Ruling and outcome

The court held that admitting the report would unnecessarily burden the proceedings without adding determinative value, and that its rejection caused no prejudice to the defendants, who would in any event need to call the underlying witnesses. Concluding that the report suffered from both procedural and substantive irregularities, the court granted the opposition brought by the plaintiff, L'Unique Assurances générales inc., rejecting the notice of communication and the investigation report of Alain Harvey and Guy Bérubé dated August 12, 2022 (exhibit D-2), and ordering that the original and all copies of that report be removed from the court record and returned to defense counsel. Costs were reserved to follow the outcome on the merits of the underlying litigation; the judgment does not award or quantify any monetary sum, as it resolves only an evidentiary motion rather than the substantive claim.