In the same judgment, the superior court sanctions both an imprudent buyer and a seller in bad faith, particularly by declaring that the latter will not be released from the judgment for the reduction of the sale price rendered against him despite his ban

This post, published on Éditions Yvon Blais’ blog on latent defects on November 17, 2017 (FR), discusses the judgment in Abran v. Tourville (Full Text | Fiche Quantum), in which the Superior Court, in a recourse for damages for fraud, found the responsibility to be shared between the seller and the buyer.

Essentially, in this judgment rendered on March 4, 2015 by the Honourable Michèle Lacroix, j.s.c., the court concluded that a seller who misleads his buyer by giving him a false sense of security must be held responsible if the evidence shows that the misrepresentations, their intentional nature, and the error they caused were decisive for the buyer’s error. Nonetheless, the fact remains that a buyer is not relieved of his obligation to act as a prudent and diligent buyer and he must take certain minimum steps when acquiring a property.

In these circumstances, the court adopted a middle-ground solution by which it split the responsibility between the seller and the buyer, proportional to their respective faults, in accordance with the second paragraph of section 1478 of the Civil Code of Quebec.

Additionally, in this same decision, the court ruled on the exception provided for under section 178(1)(e) of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, declaring that the seller is not released of his debt towards the buyer in light of the latter’s evidence of the seller’s fraudulent intent.