Three Canadian tobacco companies will not have to make an immediate $1.13 billion payment to Quebec smokers who won a landmark class action suit after the Quebec Court of Appeal held that the justification for the provisional execution is weak, the prejudice to the firms serious, and that the balance of convenience weighs in their favour. An initial payment of $1.13 billion was due this weekend after Quebec Superior Justice Brian Riordan held in Létourneau c. JTI-MacDonald Corp., 2015 QCCS 2382 that it was “high time that the companies started to pay for their sins” and “high time” for the plaintiffs and their lawyers to receive some relief from the “gargantuan” financial burden of bringing the tobacco companies to justice. But the three-judge appeal court panel found that the existence of those “sins” is sub judice, or under judicial consideration, by the Court of Appeal, and therefore this “weakness in the order behooves our intervention.” Delays as a justification for ordering provisional execution of an immediate initial $1.13 billion payment “does not stand up to scrutiny,” added appeal court. “If delays in appeal were in themselves sufficient to satisfy the criteria of article 547 of the Code of Civil Procedure [...]
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