Demolition Is Not a Use Protected by the Legal Warranty of Quality

This post, published on Éditions Yvons Blais’ blog on latent defects on April 24, 2017 (FR), discusses the judgment in Immeubles Jacques Robitaille inc. v. Province canadienne des religieux de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul (Full Text | Fiche Quantum), in which the Superior Court reminds us that the presence of a defect affecting an immovable intended to be demolished is, in principle, not covered by the legal warranty of quality, as the immovable’s use is in no way compromised by the presence of the defect.

In this case, the buyer, who acquired a vacant and decommissioned immovable that he wished to demolish in part in order to transform it into a hotel, discovered after the sale that the building contained asbestos.

The buyer sued the seller for the costs of removing the asbestos. Noting that the presence of asbestos in the building was not likely to harm the health of the building’s occupants, and that the presence of asbestos in said building did not violate any applicable law or regulation, the court found that sole presence of asbestos does not constitute a defect covered by the legal warranty of quality; the presence of asbestos did not compromise the physical use of the property covered by the legal warranty of quality.

Considering that under the law, one of the four conditions for a latent defect to be covered by the legal warranty of quality is that the defect must be serious and result in a deficit of use, the court questioned whether it should consider that the buyer of the immovable wanted to use it by demolishing a significant portion of it.

The court found that the presence of a defect affecting an immovable intended to be demolished is, in principle, not covered by the legal warranty of quality, as the immovable’s use is no way compromised by the presence of the defect. Moreover, the legal warranty of quality does not cover the fact that an anticipated demolition/transformation may cost more than the buyer had expected.