Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Whether Michelin Chabot should be declared a quérulent (vexatious) litigant under article 55 of the Code of Civil Procedure and articles 68 and following of the Regulation of the Superior Court of Québec in Civil Matters.
• Repeated disciplinary complaints and proceedings brought by Chabot against DJL's lawyers and expert sought the same documents and exchanges that had been systematically refused to him.
• Professional secrecy and litigation privilege were consistently upheld to bar disclosure of the communications between Me Pierre Lessard and Dr Randolph Stephenson.
• Application of the vexatious-litigant indicators drawn from the case law, including Diodati c. Zanga, to Chabot's conduct.
• Chabot submitted no serious legal argument supporting his requests or the complaints filed with various professional orders.
• Scope of the Superior Court's inherent jurisdiction to extend the quérulence declaration to bodies subject to its superintending power, including disciplinary councils and syndics.

Facts of the case

Construction DJL inc. (DJL) operates in the construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure. Michelin Chabot is the president and principal shareholder of Pavage Chabot inc., a company working mainly in asphalt paving. Around April 29, 2010, Pavage Chabot obtained a subcontract from DJL to pave the ramps of Autoroute 50. On May 20, 2010, during the performance of that contract, a workplace accident caused the death of Ronald Chabot, Michelin Chabot's brother. On September 26, 2013, Pavage Chabot filed an originating application against DJL claiming payment of unpaid invoices under the contract, excess costs and additional work, punitive damages, and damages for trouble, annoyance and inconvenience. DJL raised prescription (the limitation period) and Pavage Chabot's failure to follow the claims procedure set out in the contract. To counter the prescription argument, Pavage Chabot invoked Chabot's psychological incapacity to act following his brother's death, supported by an expert report from Dr Hubert Van Gijseghem; DJL filed a contrary expert report from Dr Randolph Stephenson around February 12, 2018, supporting Chabot's capacity to act. Chabot then filed private complaints with the disciplinary councils against Me Pierre Lessard, DJL's former lawyer, and Dr Stephenson, seeking the documents and exchanges between them relating to the expert report. On June 19, 2019, Justice Lukasz Granosik suspended those disciplinary proceedings pending final judgment on the initial claim. The trial took place from October 5 to 9, 2020 before Justice Guylaine Duplessis, during which all objections to producing the Lessard–Stephenson exchanges were maintained on the basis of professional secrecy and litigation privilege. On April 8, 2021, Justice Duplessis dismissed Pavage Chabot's action as prescribed. On April 20, 2023, the Court of Appeal allowed the initial claim in part, ordering DJL to pay Pavage Chabot the sum of $40,642.32, being the contractual balance owed, while rejecting the claims for excess and additional costs on the basis of prescription. Despite that final judgment, Chabot multiplied complaints against the professionals initially targeted and against DJL's other lawyers, leading DJL to ask the Superior Court to declare him a quérulent litigant.

Legal provisions at issue

The judgment rests on statutory provisions rather than contractual clauses. Article 7 of the Civil Code of Québec provides that no right may be exercised with the intent of injuring another or in an excessive and unreasonable manner contrary to the requirements of good faith. Article 51 of the Code of Civil Procedure allows courts, at any time and even on their own initiative, to declare a judicial application or pleading abusive, including where it results from vexatious or quérulent conduct or from excessive or unreasonable use of procedure. Article 55 permits the court, where the abuse stems from a party's quérulence, to prohibit that party from instituting proceedings or filing pleadings without prior authorization of the chief justice and on conditions the chief justice determines. Articles 68 and 69 of the Regulation of the Superior Court of Québec in Civil Matters likewise allow the court to prohibit a person exercising the right to litigate in an excessive or unreasonable manner from instituting proceedings without prior authorization, and provide that the resulting order may be general or restricted in scope, apply in one or more districts, be limited in time, and in exceptional circumstances even limit access to a courthouse.

The court's reasoning and analysis

Justice Nicole Tremblay drew on the factors summarized in Diodati c. Zanga, which include obstinacy and narcissism, appearing mostly as a plaintiff, multiplying vexatious proceedings including against officers of justice, repeating the same questions through successive proceedings, advancing inventive but incongruous legal arguments, appealing or seeking review of most adverse decisions, and self-representation, while noting these factors need not all be present. Applying them, the Court found that Chabot repeatedly sued lawyers, former lawyers, representatives, experts and agents, always seeking the same transmission of documents and information that had been systematically refused, even after the Court of Appeal's final judgment of April 20, 2023. Every decision rendered reiterated that, by reason of professional secrecy and/or litigation privilege, he would never have access to the exchanges between Me Lessard and Dr Stephenson, yet all his proceedings were dismissed as unfounded and he continued to multiply them. The Court noted his obstinacy and belief in a conspiracy theory between Me Lessard and Dr Stephenson, his refusal to accept the conclusions of every body rejecting his claims, and his renewed demand for the same documents during case management before Justice Clément Samson on March 12, 2026, which was refused, followed by a request for re-examination on April 9, 2026, which was also dismissed. Chabot described himself as tenacious and persevering according to "his research on Chat GPT," submitted no serious legal argument, and usually represented himself, although he said he consulted a lawyer to review his applications. While courteous in his proceedings, he clearly demonstrated an inability to accept the rejection of his efforts, and the Court found a quérulence declaration to be the only legal solution to stop the repetitive filing of abusive proceedings. Because the Superior Court's inherent jurisdiction protects litigants unduly pursued before other tribunals or bodies subject to its superintending power, the declaration was extended accordingly.

Ruling and outcome

The Court granted the application and declared Michelin Chabot a quérulent litigant within the meaning of article 55 of the Code of Civil Procedure and articles 68 and following of the Regulation. Construction DJL inc. thus prevailed: any pleading in active disciplinary files and any new proceeding by Chabot against DJL, its employees, agents, experts and lawyers, current and former, must first be authorized by the Chief Justice of the Superior Court or a designated judge, the syndic of the relevant professional order, the chief president of the Bureau des présidents des conseils de discipline, or the president of the tribunal concerned, as the case may be, and court clerks must refuse any unauthorized filings. The Court also ordered provisional execution notwithstanding appeal given the urgency and abusive context, the whole with legal costs in DJL's favour. No specific monetary amount was awarded in this judgment; the legal costs granted to DJL were not quantified. The only dollar figure in the decision, the $40,642.32 contractual balance, was awarded to Pavage Chabot by the Court of Appeal in its earlier April 20, 2023 judgment, not in the present proceeding.