Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of the certified class raises questions about who qualifies as a member based on presence at the Crane building and alleged psychological harm from asbestos fears.
• Adequacy and proportionality of the proposed notice plan, particularly the number and selection of newspapers, is central to ensuring members are properly informed without excessive cost.
• Tension exists between maximizing member outreach and controlling defendants’ financial burden for notice publication and transmission.
• The evidentiary record on current and former tenants, including how many still occupy the Crane building, affects whether posting notices on the building itself is justified.
• Potential prejudice to current tenants and to defendants’ commercial relationships is weighed against any incremental benefit of on-site posting of notices.
• The court’s interpretation of article 579 C.p.c. and the principle of proportionality guides how collective rights to be informed are balanced with practical and economic considerations in class action procedure.

Background and nature of the dispute
Caroline Derosnay brings a class action in Quebec Superior Court, in the Class Actions Chamber, against 9875212 Canada Inc., Mark Kaufman and Phillip Kaufman, who are current or former owners of a building known as the Crane building in Montréal. The case concerns alleged exposure to asbestos during renovation and asbestos-removal works carried out at the Crane building between 23 December 2014 and 12 June 2015. The action is framed as a class proceeding on behalf of multiple individuals affected by those works.

Facts and asbestos exposure allegations
The certified group includes anyone residing in Quebec during the relevant period who was a user, tenant, visitor or client of the Crane building, or who lived there, and who was exposed to asbestos due to allegedly non-compliant asbestos-removal operations during the defined six-month window. The alleged harm is psychological, based on fears and apprehensions associated with exposure to asbestos and its long-term health risks. The Crane building is a three-storey building plus basement, primarily commercial in vocation, though some units were at times used for residential purposes despite municipal zoning not authorizing such residential use. During the period of the works, only 19 of 30 rental units in the building were actually rented and occupied. Of those 19 tenants, only three remain in the building at the time of the 2026 decision, nearly a decade after the alleged exposure. This change in occupancy over time is an important factual element because it bears directly on whether physical posting of class notices at the building will realistically reach the people who were present during the asbestos-removal period.

Authorization of the class action and issues certified
In a prior decision rendered on 14 July 2025, the Superior Court authorized Derosnay to institute a class action in damages against the defendants. The authorization judgment defined the class and also identified the main common issues of fact and law to be decided collectively. These issues include whether the defendants breached applicable norms and obligations in conducting asbestos removal at the Crane building; whether they fulfilled their contractual and extra-contractual duties to provide safe premises during the works; and whether their conduct infringed group members’ fundamental rights to safety and to psychological and physical integrity protected by the Canadian and Quebec charters. The court also certified questions about whether any violations constituted faults giving rise to liability, whether the defendants may be held responsible for psychological damages arising from fear of asbestos exposure, and whether punitive damages might be owed. The only individualized issue reserved for later determination is the quantum of each member’s individual damages. In the authorization decision, the court noted it remained reasonable to assume that more than a hundred people may have been exposed during the works, shaping the scale of the class.

The legal framework for notices to class members
Once a class action is authorized, Quebec’s Code of Civil Procedure requires that notices be given to members. Article 579 C.p.c. governs the content of those notices and provides that the court determines the timing, form and mode of publication, taking into account the nature of the action, the composition of the group and the geographical situation of members. The function of the notice is to preserve members’ rights by informing them of the existence of the class action, the identity of the representative, and especially their right to opt out and the procedure and deadline for doing so. Case law emphasizes that while it is not necessary to prove every member has actually been informed, the notification procedure must be designed so that it is reasonably likely that information will reach intended recipients. The court also must follow proportionality principles: the dissemination plan should aim to reach as many members as reasonably possible, balanced against the nature and scale of the case, the remedies sought, and the efforts and costs entailed. The modern media environment, with fragmented audiences, often calls for a combination of tools (traditional newspapers, electronic media, direct notice), and individual notification should be favoured when circumstances allow it.

The parties’ competing proposals on notice and dissemination
The authorization judgment had deferred the hearing and decision on member notices to a later date. In the 2026 ruling, the court is now seized with the plaintiff’s motion seeking approval of the proposed notices (content) and the dissemination protocol (means by which notices will be transmitted and published). The parties agree on the text and content of the notices themselves, filed as Exhibit P-1. Their dispute centres instead on certain aspects of the proposed dissemination protocol, filed as P-2. Specifically, they disagree on two major elements: first, how many newspapers should carry the notice and which ones; and second, whether notices should be posted on the exterior façades or otherwise on the premises of the Crane building. The plaintiff initially seeks publication in five newspapers: La Presse +, Nouvelles d’ici, The Montreal Gazette, the Journal de Montréal and the Journal de Québec. The defendants argue that some of these are unnecessary given the territorial focus of the class and that publishing in so many outlets would generate disproportionate expense. The plaintiff also requests that notices be displayed on two of the building’s exterior façades; however, at the hearing she is unable to clarify whether the building actually has an interior lobby or common area suitable for posting, which underscores the limited evidentiary basis for the on-site posting request.

Court’s analysis on publication in newspapers
In analyzing the newspaper issue, the court places significance on the class definition. The action is territorial and concerns those linked to a single building in Montréal during a specific time. The parties have already agreed that notices will appear in two major newspapers serving the greater Montréal metropolitan area, La Presse + and The Montreal Gazette, as well as in the local paper Nouvelles d’ici. Publication in these three outlets will cost the defendants more than CAD 13,000, a non-trivial expense given the relatively limited number of potential members. The court notes that the class reasonably encompasses somewhat more than a hundred people, not thousands across the province. As a result, the court finds there is no useful or proportionate justification for publishing the notice in the Journal de Québec, which circulates outside the main area where potential class members are likely to reside. During the hearing, the plaintiff effectively abandons the request for the Journal de Québec but maintains that the Journal de Montréal should still be included. The court, however, concludes that adding a fourth newspaper is neither useful nor desirable when the objective is to reach likely members efficiently and proportionately. The judge also observes that the effectiveness of newspaper publication as a means of reaching individuals is increasingly questionable in contemporary practice, which further weighs against incurring additional print advertising costs without clear incremental benefit. On this basis, the court limits newspaper publication to the three already agreed-upon outlets: La Presse +, Nouvelles d’ici and The Montreal Gazette.

Court’s analysis on posting notices at the Crane building
The court then turns to the plaintiff’s request for posting notices on two exterior façades of the Crane building. There is no absolute rule in Quebec jurisprudence mandating that notices be displayed in the defendants’ commercial premises; each case depends on its specific facts. In some past cases, courts have ordered brief notices to be posted in defendants’ business locations when that mode of dissemination was especially likely to reach class members, for example where members are customers of a financial institution who regularly visit local branches. Here, the court considers several factual elements: the action relates to a six-month window almost a decade in the past; the building is mainly commercial; and only 19 of 30 units were occupied during the relevant period, with only three of those tenants still present. The class also includes non-tenants such as customers and visitors. Taking this into account, the court finds that the plaintiff has not shown that posting notices on two of the four façades—or even in an interior lobby, whose existence was not proved—would meaningfully advance the objective of actually reaching the people who were present during the works. The judge further weighs the potential prejudice to defendants. Posting on the façades might harm current landlords’ relationships with present tenants, who mostly were not in the building during the relevant period and are not concerned by the class action, but who might become confused or alarmed by notice of an asbestos-related class action grounded on unproven allegations. In view of this, the likely prejudice to defendants and the potential confusion for uninvolved tenants outweigh any speculative advantages of façade posting. The court notes that in similar circumstances other courts have declined to order on-site posting in defendants’ current commercial locations.

Preference for targeted, direct notification to former tenants
The court favours more targeted approaches that are better tailored to reaching those who were actually present during the asbestos-removal period. The defendants agree to send the approved notice by both post and email to the three current tenants who were already tenants at the time of the works. The court orders this dual mode of notification. Additionally, the court requires the defendants to send notices to each of the 19 tenants who occupied a space in the Crane building during the relevant period, at any email address in their possession for the tenant or its authorized representative. For those among the 19 that are still registered at the Quebec enterprise registry (Registre des entreprises du Québec), defendants must also mail notices to the domicile addresses appearing in that registry. The defendants are not required to notify businesses that have been struck off the registry since 12 June 2015, which reflects a pragmatic balance between reach and feasibility. In the judge’s view, these measures are more likely than façade posting to reach actual class members, since they directly target identified former tenants who were demonstrably in the building during the alleged exposure period.

Outcome and parties’ relative success
In its operative conclusions, the Superior Court grants the plaintiff’s motion to approve the notices and dissemination protocol in part. It approves the agreed-upon text of the member notices and generally approves the proposed protocol, subject to the modifications set out in the judgment. The court restricts newspaper publication to La Presse +, Nouvelles d’ici and The Montreal Gazette and rejects the plaintiff’s bid for additional publication in the Journal de Montréal or the Journal de Québec. It also denies the request for posting notices on the Crane building’s façades, instead ordering the defendants to transmit notices directly by email and mail to identified current and former tenants in specified ways. The court orders that the proceeding be without court costs (“sans frais de justice”), but it directs that all costs associated with transmitting and publishing the notices be borne by the defendants. No compensatory or punitive damages are awarded or quantified in this procedural judgment, and no specific dollar figure is given for notice-related expenses. As a result, in this decision the plaintiff as representative is partially successful in securing approval of the notices and a dissemination plan, while the defendants succeed in narrowing the scope and cost of publication; the only monetary consequence ordered is that the defendants must pay the costs of notice transmission and publication, with the exact amount not determinable from the judgment itself.