Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Invoices, as unsigned writings used in the ordinary course of business, made proof of their content, and the former client offered no preponderant evidence that the hours, rates or disbursements were exaggerated.
   
• Hourly rates charged by the lead attorney, ranging from $265 in 2018 to $405 in 2024, were found reasonable.
   
• Arguments that the fees were capped at about $20,000 and payable by Mr. G. failed, since the client was invoiced almost monthly, did not refuse payment before March 14, 2024, and Mr. G. never signed the fee agreements.
   
• Challenges to the June 30, 2018 share valuation date and the absence of trial steps after November 2020 were dismissed, with the court finding nothing to question the lead attorney’s competence, diligence or strategic choices.
   
• Interest was set at 12.3% under the March 3, 2022 fee agreement rather than the 15.4% claimed, because the February 19, 2024 agreement had no retroactive effect.
   
• A declaration reserving the client’s right to seek damages was denied as without merit, following her discontinuance of a $40,000 cross-demand.
   

Facts of the case

Goldwater Droit inc. (formerly Goldwater, Dubé Inc.) represented Shirley Andrea Escobar Hernandez from September 27, 2019, to March 8, 2024, in divorce proceedings that Mr. G. had initiated on June 26, 2018. Over that period, the firm billed her $101,943.21 for fees, disbursements and taxes, sending 46 invoices in the course of its mandate. It sued in the Court of Québec, Civil Division, to recover an outstanding balance of $20,136.74, covering invoices for the period from November 23, 2022, to February 19, 2024.

Escobar Hernandez argued that the firm’s services after November 2020 had no value because they never meaningfully advanced the matrimonial case. She also claimed the firm erred in agreeing that the joint expert would value Mr. G.’s shares in his companies as of June 30, 2018, rather than October 2020, when she said the couple stopped living together. Her original contestation, dated September 20, 2024, included a cross-demand for $40,000 in damages. On March 3, 2026, she discontinued that cross-demand and amended her contestation, asserting that the financial harm resulting from the firm’s handling of its mandate would not be quantified until the divorce proceedings were adjudicated, and seeking a declaration reserving her right to claim damages. The matter was heard on March 19 and 20, 2026.

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

Under article 2831 of the Civil Code of Québec, an unsigned writing used in the ordinary course of an enterprise makes proof of its content. Section 127 of the Act respecting the Barreau du Québec adds that a lawyer’s testimony under oath makes proof of the request, nature, duration and value of the lawyer’s services. The Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers requires integrity and diligence, prohibits performing or multiplying professional acts without sufficient reason, and sets out the factors for assessing whether fees are fair and reasonable. These include the lawyer’s experience, the time and effort required, the difficulty and importance of the matter, the responsibility assumed, any special skills or exceptional speed needed, the result obtained, and any amounts paid by a third party in connection with the mandate.

Several agreements also shaped the dispute. The fee agreements signed by Escobar Hernandez set the hourly rates of the lead attorney, Me Jeffry Awwad. Interest was fixed at 12.3% per year in the agreement dated March 3, 2022, and at 15.4% in the agreement dated February 19, 2024. The Interim Consent to Judgment of November 27, 2020, ratified by judgment, provided for the joint share appraisal and contained a specific section on provision for costs. A Second Interim Consent to Judgment dealt only with the legal fees incurred to that point and described Mr. G.’s $30,000 payment to the firm in trust as an advance “to be later accounted for by the parties or the Court.”

Reasoning and analysis

The court first found that the billed services were actually rendered. Each invoice listed the tasks performed, who performed them and the fees charged. Escobar Hernandez had made a few comments over the years about rate increases, but she never formally objected in a timely manner and produced no preponderant evidence that the billing was inaccurate.

On the fairness of the fees, the court noted that Awwad, a family law attorney admitted to the Barreau du Québec in 2015, charged rates between $265 in 2018 and $405 in 2024 and sometimes delegated work to articling students or junior attorneys to limit his client’s fees. He reviewed every invoice before sending it, showed that several phone calls and text exchanges were not automatically billed, and cut his own time rather than that of the students and attorneys working with him. Escobar Hernandez preferred speaking with him because he spoke Spanish, and their conversations were often long; he told her more than once that he could not provide psychosocial support and that a professional would cost her much less. The billing records, Awwad’s testimony, the court docket and records, and the limited testimony of Mr. G.’s attorney, constrained by attorney-client privilege, confirmed that Awwad was managing a particularly complex and difficult situation. A judgment of November 5, 2025, on incidental proceedings brought by Mr. G. in the divorce file estimated that Escobar Hernandez had received $1,091,580 from Mr. G. over five years under the November 2020 Interim Consent to Judgment, and recorded that she had spoken positively about Awwad’s representation in her testimony there.

Escobar Hernandez’s claim that the fees would be about $20,000 and paid by Mr. G. was rejected. The court accepted Awwad’s evidence that he had explained the difficulty of estimating fees, which depended on the time spent on the case, itself affected by the opposing party’s responsiveness and cooperation, and that he may have mentioned $20,000 as a minimum in that context. He had also explained the concept of a provision for costs without presenting it as a guarantee that fees would be limited to that amount. Adopting the reasoning in Goldwater, Dubé Inc. v. D. P., 2025 QCCS 866, the court observed that fee estimates in family matters are hard to give, which makes it essential for lawyers to keep clients regularly informed of fees. Here, she received invoices almost monthly and never complained of an overrun before the lawsuit, even while discussing unpaid fees with the firm. An April 30, 2020 text message to Awwad showed she knew he billed by the hour. She did not refuse payment until her email of March 14, 2024, and believed Mr. G. alone was responsible, yet Mr. G. had not signed the fee agreements. Given the time she spent commenting on and debating the interim consent agreements with Awwad, the court found she knew or should have known that Mr. G.’s advance was not a blank cheque allowing her to prolong the dispute without bearing any legal costs.

Her criticism of the share valuation date fared no better. A July 19, 2024 judgment in the divorce case had authorized her to file an application to disavow the firm regarding the expert evaluation, but she never did, citing financial reasons. The court did not accept that explanation in light of Awwad’s testimony and her own email of December 14, 2019, in which she wrote that she and Mr. G. lived as husband and wife until March 2018 and never attempted reconciliation afterward. Other complaints about the expert report fell within the litigation strategy of the firm, which owed only an obligation of means and not of results, and nothing in the evidence showed that Awwad failed to act as a competent and diligent attorney in his use of the report.

As for the alleged failure to prepare for trial, including the absence of a pre-trial examination of Mr. G., a defence and cross-application, applications for provisional measures and provision for costs, and a declaration of readiness, the court noted that the expert report only became available on July 19, 2022. From then on, Awwad made every effort to settle, believing negotiation preferable to a trial in the circumstances, and the November 5, 2025 judgment supported his view that some circumstances were detrimental to his client. Even after Mr. G. sent a draft request to set the case down for trial on November 21, 2023, room for negotiation remained, and nothing in the evidence called Awwad’s strategic choices into question up to the end of the mandate in March 2024.

The firm sought interest at 15.4%, but that rate came from the February 19, 2024 agreement, which did not apply retroactively. Since all unpaid invoices predated it, the 12.3% rate from the March 3, 2022 agreement applied. The requested declaration reserving Escobar Hernandez’s right to damages was denied as without merit. Acknowledging in its conclusion that such a statement had been made was unnecessary, the court found, and a discontinuance restores matters to their former state under article 213 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

Ruling and overall outcome

The court granted the firm’s original application for unpaid fees in part and dismissed Escobar Hernandez’s amended contestation seeking a declaration of reservation of rights. Goldwater Droit inc. succeeded in recovering its unpaid fees, with Escobar Hernandez ordered to pay $20,136.74 plus interest at the contractual rate of 12.3% per year from February 19, 2024, rather than the 15.4% the firm had requested. Costs were also awarded to the firm, though the judgment does not specify their amount.