Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Validity of a bilateral promise to purchase an immovable signed by a 92-year-old seller who was placed under public curatorship a few months after signing.
• Nullity of the promise under article 290 C.c.Q., which required proof that the seller's inaptitude was notorious or known to the buyers at the time of contracting.
• Annulment was also available under article 1398 C.c.Q., where proof of contemporaneous inaptitude shifted the burden to the plaintiffs to show a lucid interval.
• Whether the action for passing of title was brought within a reasonable delay, calculated from the defendant's first refusal in April 2024.
• Prescription of the recourse under article 2925 C.c.Q., the three-year period running from the September 30, 2021 deadline for signing the deed of sale.
• Evidentiary weaknesses caused by the deaths of nearly all key actors — the seller, her first legatee, her friend and translator, and the instrumenting notary.

Facts of the case

The plaintiffs, Al Masud Md Abdullah and Asma Ahmed, were long-time neighbours and friends of Mme M... J..., an elderly woman who owned an undivided unit in a Montreal duplex. After she repeatedly offered to sell her unit to Mr. Masud, the parties agreed on a price of $200,000, based on comparables and the unit's poor condition, which the plaintiffs said would require roughly $100,000 to $150,000 in repairs. On March 30, 2021, the seller, then 92 years old, signed a promise to purchase (Exhibit P-4), handed over the keys, and the plaintiffs began work on the unit. Because the seller's notary, Me Igor Pryszlak, could not complete the deed in time, the parties signed an amendment extending the deadline for passing title to September 30, 2021. On July 9, 2021, the Superior Court's Special Clerk declared the seller unfit to care for herself and administer her property and opened a curatorship. She died on June 8, 2022. Her universal legatee, her grandson Konrad Popowicz, signed a written declaration stating he was willing to respect his grandmother's wish to sell the condo to the plaintiffs on the same terms, but he died on January 3, 2023, before the succession was liquidated. His brother, the defendant Bartosz Popwicz — whose status as heir was not proven at trial — was eventually located abroad. By April 2024 it became clear, through the succession's liquidator, that the defendant refused to sell at $200,000, the property having gained considerable value since 2021. The plaintiffs filed their originating application on October 8, 2024, seeking forced passing of title, or alternatively $58,191.40 in damages.

Contractual clauses and legal provisions at issue

The dispute centred on the March 30, 2021 bilateral promise of sale at $200,000 and its amendment, which extended the deadline for passing title to September 30, 2021 and specified (clause 2.1 of the Amendment) that the keys were handed over to allow the buyer to begin work, while maintaining the obligation to pass title. Konrad Popowicz's written declaration (Exhibit P-18) stated that he knew his grandmother wanted to sell the condo for $200,000 and that he was willing to respect her wish on the same terms and conditions. The governing legal provisions included articles 1396 and 1712 C.c.Q. (right to force passing of title), article 1398 C.c.Q. (consent must be given by an apt person), article 290 C.c.Q. (annulment of acts made before a protective regime where the inaptitude was notorious or known to the co-contractant, applicable here because the 2020 reform abrogated the former article 284 C.c.Q. and deemed persons under curatorship to be under tutorship), and articles 2880 and 2925 C.c.Q. on the three-year prescription of personal recourses.

The court's reasoning and analysis

Justice Patrick Girard of the Superior Court of Québec first addressed the conditions of the action for passing of title. It was no longer contested that the plaintiffs had the funds available since 2021 and had presented a deed of sale conforming to the promise. On the requirement to act within a reasonable delay, the Court held that the delay is calculated from the day the other party expresses its refusal to pass title; since neither the seller, the Public Curator, nor Konrad Popowicz ever refused — quite the contrary — and the defendant only expressed his refusal in April 2024, the delay was not unreasonable in the particular circumstances. On validity, the Court accepted the expert evidence of Dre Judith Latour, who described a major neurocognitive disorder, predominantly Alzheimer's, evolving since 2016, with Folstein (MMSE) scores of 23/30 in 2016 and 16/30 in 2019, and who concluded the seller was totally unfit by 2019. The plaintiffs offered no expert evidence in response, so the Court found the seller was inapt when she signed the promise and its extension. While no evidence established that her inaptitude was notorious, the Court found it more probable than not that the plaintiffs knew (or should have known) of her condition, given the cumulative weight of the severity of her state, her complete dependence on her friend Mme Zimny, the language barrier, and the fact that she left the price entirely to the buyers without any verification of her own — even though the Court accepted that Mr. Masud acted in good faith and that the $200,000 price was not unreasonable on its face for 2021 given the property's dilapidated state. This sufficed for annulment under article 290 C.c.Q., and in any event the proven inaptitude, unrebutted by any evidence of a lucid interval, also rendered the promise null under article 1398 C.c.Q. Konrad Popowicz's declaration was of no assistance, as it did not establish the seller's aptitude and his own legal capacity and status (as liquidator or legatee) at the time of signing were never proven. On prescription, the Court held that the three-year period under article 2925 C.c.Q. began on September 30, 2021, the deadline fixed by the amendment, making the October 8, 2024 application late by a few days. The curatorship, the successive deaths, and the plaintiffs' hope of an amicable settlement did not amount to an "impossibility in fact to act" under article 2904 C.c.Q., since procedural mechanisms allowed suit against the seller or her succession at all times. The subsidiary damages claim was equally prescribed, unsupported by proof, and without fault given the nullity of the promise. Finally, the Court rejected the defendant's own claim for $5,000 in compensatory and punitive damages for abuse of procedure, finding the plaintiffs were not in bad faith and their recourse was neither abusive nor manifestly bound to fail.

Ruling and overall outcome

In its judgment dated July 6, 2026, the Court dismissed the plaintiffs' originating application, dismissed the defendant's claim for compensatory and punitive damages, and struck from the land register the notice of advance registration published on October 15, 2024. The defendant, Bartosz Popwicz, emerged as the successful party overall, as the action to force the sale of the property at $200,000 failed on both nullity and prescription grounds, and the judgment was rendered with legal costs in his favour; no monetary award was made to him beyond those costs, whose exact amount is not specified in the judgment, and his own $5,000 damages claim was refused.