Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Prescription failed as a defence because Miralis acknowledged liability at a September 23, 2022 meeting and continued to consider itself bound until at least fall 2024.
   
• Sections 43 and 53 of the Consumer Protection Act allowed the homeowner to sue the manufacturer directly to enforce its written limited lifetime warranty.
   
• Uncontradicted evidence, including photographs, an inspection report and an admission from Groupe 3R’s officer, established the defects.
   
• Lacquered MDF doors could not be demanded from Miralis because the supply contract specified a laminated finish, which Miralis had followed.
   
• Her refusal to have Groupe 3R install replacement parts for free stemmed from unawareness of each party’s role and subjective fear, and part of the responsibility for the failed settlement was attributed to her.
   
• Damages for correcting the defects were set at the $11,000 she claimed, after the court gave little weight to a late-filed estimate and noted Miralis’s $15,995 internal valuation of the replacement parts.
   

Facts of the case

Delia Bogdanovici wanted Miralis cabinets for her kitchen renovation and had to go through an intermediary to buy them. Her renovation contractor, 8140855 Canada inc., signed a supply agreement with Raymonde Aubry Design on March 5, 2018. Miralis sells only to approved businesses in its distributor network, a group that includes Groupe 3R but not Aubry Design. Groupe 3R acted as intermediary between Miralis and Aubry Design, and one of its officers is the father of André Aubry, who took the measurements.

The cabinets were to be installed in May 2018 but were not delivered until June. According to Bogdanovici, they were the wrong colour and were made of polymer rather than the lacquered MDF she had asked for. Once installed, the upper doors caught on the ceiling. After André Aubry cut the doors to fit, their coating began to crack and delaminate.

Relying on Miralis’s lifetime warranty, Bogdanovici escalated the matter to the manufacturer in June 2020. In a June 25, 2020 reply, a Miralis representative said the warranty request would be analyzed, but that Groupe 3R should first be paid in full for corrective work it had done. By Bogdanovici’s account, Groupe 3R carried out some repairs in January 2021 but could not install new doors, which were the wrong colour and size. In September 2021, a Miralis employee called to ask how much she wanted to close the file, and she replied that she wanted the warranty honoured.

Her lawyer sent a formal notice to Aubry Design, Miralis and Groupe 3R on August 8, 2022. A meeting followed at her home on September 23, 2022, with Harold Bélanger, then an officer of Miralis, and Joël Bibeau of Groupe 3R. Bélanger measured the Miralis components and the kitchen and documented everything with photographs. The parties verbally agreed that Miralis would honour its warranty and correct and replace the non-compliant components, and Bibeau agreed that Groupe 3R would remove the old cabinets and install the new ones. Miralis put the replacement order into production on October 19, 2022.

The arrangement then broke down. Bogdanovici told Bélanger she had no confidence in Groupe 3R and wanted Miralis to handle both manufacturing and installation. When Bibeau put the agreement in writing in a document dated December 20, 2022, she was not satisfied. She wanted glossy Lune de miel lacquered MDF doors rather than polymer, said the written scope of work was narrower than what had been agreed, and again asked that Miralis do the installation. Bibeau maintained that the document reflected the agreement faithfully. Health issues paused the project until June 2023, after which she wrote to Miralis officer Daniel Drapeau and received nothing beyond an acknowledgment of receipt. A final formal notice went out on August 7, 2024, and she filed in the Court of Québec’s Small Claims Division on December 12, 2024. As amended at the hearing, her claim was for $15,000: $11,000 to correct the deficiencies and $4,000 in non-pecuniary damages. Miralis argued that the claim was prescribed and that the damages were exaggerated and unjustified.

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

Miralis’s “Limited Lifetime Warranty” certified that its products are made with quality materials and are free of defects likely to impair their use, for as long as the original purchaser owns them and they remain where they were first installed. The warranty covered defects in workmanship and materials and limited Miralis’s liability, at its discretion, to repairing or remanufacturing defective products. According to the court, its wording also excluded all consequential damages, including non-pecuniary damages.

Section 53 of the Consumer Protection Act allows a consumer to sue the manufacturer directly. Section 43 provides that a manufacturer’s warranty mentioned in advertising binds the manufacturer even if the contract does not state it. Section 272 permits damages where a manufacturer fails to meet an obligation imposed on it by law. Articles 2803 and 2804 of the Civil Code of Québec required each party to prove the facts underlying its claims, with evidence sufficient if it made a fact more probable than not.

Reasoning and analysis

The court found the prescription defence surprising in the context of a lifetime warranty. Miralis had acknowledged the defects and started production of replacement parts in October 2022. Samuel Audet, Miralis’s vice-president of finance, explained that those parts sat in inventory for two years and were then destroyed “to make room.” The court accepted that Miralis acknowledged liability at the September 23, 2022 meeting, a point Bibeau’s testimony supported, and found that Miralis considered itself bound until at least fall 2024. The claim was therefore not prescribed.

Evidence of the defects was clear and uncontradicted. Photographs and an inspection report by Contempo Design inc. demonstrated them, and some cabinet surfaces were still delaminating. Bibeau admitted that the cabinets had several deficiencies, and Bélanger at least implicitly acknowledged them by authorizing the replacement order.

On damages, the court noted that Bogdanovici had asked both for $15,000 and for an order compelling Miralis to do the work on her conditions, and held that she could not have it both ways. Miralis had destroyed the parts and no longer wished to offer the replacement, so the court assessed her loss based on the claim as amended at the hearing. Her demand for lacquered MDF failed because the contract with Aubry Design specified “Laminée M57 Lune de miel,” and Miralis had built polymer M57 Lune de miel cabinets to that specification. Any complaint about the material should have been directed to Aubry Design and the contractor. Groupe 3R held the licences needed to install cabinets and had not taken part in the 2018 installation. The court found that her refusal to accept its free installation stemmed from not understanding each party’s role and from subjective fear, not from the evidence.

An estimate from Ébénisterie Multi-Laques for lacquered MDF doors was filed late, with no testimony or statement from the business and no explanation of the difference in value between polymer and MDF doors. The court gave it little weight and treated it only as a rough order of magnitude: $18,000 plus taxes, including installation. Relying instead on Miralis’s own October 19, 2022 internal order, the court found that the replacement parts were worth $15,995 before taxes, not counting the installation Groupe 3R would have done for free. The $11,000 Bogdanovici claimed for corrections was supported by the evidence and accepted.

For non-pecuniary damages, the court held that the verbal agreement, as put in writing, complied with Miralis’s warranty and that Bogdanovici’s reasons for refusing it were unjustified. Litigation became necessary, however, because Miralis changed course. Audet confirmed at the hearing that Miralis no longer wished to produce the replacement parts, which meant it was not honouring its warranty. The court noted that the warranty’s wording excluded consequential damages, including non-pecuniary damages. Separately, it observed that section 272 of the Consumer Protection Act allows damages where a manufacturer breaches an obligation imposed by law. The court called Miralis’s failure to honour the warranty since committing to it in 2022 abnormal and unacceptable, and noted that Drapeau never got back to her. It also attributed part of the responsibility for the failed settlement to Bogdanovici, because of her beliefs that she was entitled to MDF doors and that Groupe 3R was not competent to replace the components.

Ruling and overall outcome

The claim was granted in part. Bogdanovici was awarded $11,000 for correcting the defects and $1,500 in non-pecuniary damages, and Miralis inc. was ordered to pay her $12,500. Interest at the legal rate and the additional indemnity under article 1619 of the Civil Code of Québec run from August 18, 2024, when the period in her August 7, 2024 formal notice expired. Miralis must also pay the legal costs, including the $230 court filing fee and $97.68 in bailiff fees, the amount the court separately allowed for serving the formal notice.