Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Central issue concerns whether Tim Hortons’ “Roll Up To Win” contest emails created binding consumer obligations under Québec’s Consumer Protection Act (LPC), compelling delivery of a Tracker Targa 18 WT 2024 boat and trailer.
• The court had to decide if the contest is accessory to a contract of sale for beverages, so that promotional representations in the follow-up email are contractually binding under LPC articles 41 and 42.
• Evidence about contest mechanics, the official rules, and the plaintiff’s actual “winning” history was weighed against the clear wording and impact of the “you won a boat” summary email and the later “correction” email.
• Allegations of emotional harm (excitement, stress and disappointment) and detailed media interviews from multiple recipients were key to establishing an arguable basis for compensatory and punitive damages.
• Jurisdictional and class-definition questions turned on whether Québec courts and the LPC could apply to non-Québec residents, leading to a Québec-only class of consumers who received the erroneous boat email in March or April 2024.
• Clauses in the contest rules that purported to nullify erroneous prize messages and bar class proceedings were treated as potential defences for the merits stage, not as barriers to authorization.

Background and facts of the case

Jonathan Deschâtelets is a long-time user of the Tim Hortons mobile application and participant in the “Déroule pour gagner / Roll Up To Win” promotion. In this promotion, customers earn “rebords” (rolls) by purchasing specified eligible menu items and then reveal each rim in the app or on the website for a chance to win “instant” prizes. The contest period ran from March 4 to March 31, 2024, with a deadline of April 12, 2024 to reveal all earned rims. Participation was governed by official rules that identified Tim Hortons Advertising and Promotion Fund (Canada) Inc. (THAPFCI) as the sponsor and laid out the contest structure, the nature of the prizes, and the procedures for claiming them. The rules also noted that large-value prizes would be subject to additional verification steps.

On 17 April 2024, after the contest period had closed, Deschâtelets received an email from Tim Hortons ([email protected]) with the subject line “Vos résultats Déroule pour gagner sont arrivés” (“Your Roll Up To Win results are in”). The email included a personalised greeting and a summary of his contest participation, and prominently stated “Félicitations pour votre prix : un bateau Tracker Targa 18 WT 2024 et sa remorque,” accompanied by a photo of the boat and trailer. It also summarized his other winnings, including a three-month subscription to The Athletic, three free coffees, 320 FidéliTim points, and 24 earned rims. Deschâtelets believed in good faith that he had won a boat and trailer worth approximately CAD 64,000 including taxes, and he reacted with genuine excitement.

Attempting to confirm his windfall, Deschâtelets phoned Tim Hortons’ customer service, but waited more than an hour without reaching an agent, and then made a second unsuccessful attempt with an additional 45-minute wait. While on hold during his second attempt, he received a second email from Tim Hortons that same day, headed “CORRECTION – Vos résultats Déroule pour gagner sont arrivés.” This “correction” email explained that technical errors may have led to “incorrect information” about rims or prizes being included in the earlier summary email. It expressly told customers not to rely on the original summary, stated that some prizes listed might not in fact have been won, and clarified that all actual prizes had been revealed instantly at the time of play, with high-value prizes subject to further verification. Tim Hortons apologised for the frustration and insisted that all prizes had been distributed in accordance with the contest rules, framing the issue as one limited to the accuracy of the “summary” email rather than the underlying contest outcomes.

Beyond his own experience, Deschâtelets pointed to extensive media coverage and social-media reaction. Press reports and interviews suggested that approximately 500,000 app users across Canada may have received a substantially identical email declaring that they had won the same Tracker Targa 18 WT 2024 boat and trailer. Many described strong emotional reactions—surprise, excitement, making premature plans for the boat—followed by anger and disappointment when the correction message arrived and Tim Hortons refused to honour the apparent win. Some customers even visited Tim Hortons restaurants, where employees and managers initially congratulated them, gave them “high fives,” and seemed to accept the boat email as genuine before the corporate correction was disseminated.

Deschâtelets alleged that he and the proposed class members had all suffered damage: they had reasonably relied on a clear, written representation from Tim Hortons that they had won a high-value prize, and their resulting excitement, stress and disappointment, along with time spent trying to reach customer service, went beyond the ordinary annoyances of daily life. He also relied on a prior 2023 incident in which Tim Hortons’ promotion system had erroneously advised certain participants that they had won a CAD 10,000 prepaid American Express card, only for the company later to retract the win and send a CAD 50 “Tim Card” instead. In that earlier situation, a consumer who protested via email allegedly received no substantive response. Deschâtelets cited this as evidence that Tim Hortons is a “recidivist” with respect to contest errors and inadequate redress.

The proposed class action and legal basis

Deschâtelets sought authorization to bring a class action on behalf of all consumers in Canada who had received an email from Tim Hortons declaring that they had won the Tracker Targa 18 WT 2024 boat and trailer (or any other prize) that was never delivered. The proposed claims focused on three main forms of relief: specific performance (delivery of the boat and trailer) or, alternatively, their monetary value; compensatory damages for moral prejudice (excitement, stress, and disappointment); and punitive damages of CAD 10,000 per member. He initially framed the legal basis on two pillars: the Québec Consumer Protection Act (Loi sur la protection du consommateur, LPC) and article 1812 of the Civil Code of Québec (CcQ) on promises of donation.

Under the LPC, Deschâtelets argued that a consumer contract of sale existed between Tim Hortons and each affected consumer because earning “rebords” in the contest required purchasing specified beverages or food items. The contest, in his view, was an accessory advantage to that underlying sale of goods. Articles 41 and 42 LPC provide that goods or services must conform to public representations made about them and that written or verbal declarations made by a merchant or its representative are binding. On this basis, Deschâtelets contended that the “you won a boat” email was a binding contractual representation tied to the sale of beverages; Tim Hortons was therefore legally obliged either to deliver the boat and trailer or to pay their equivalent value. He further relied on article 272 LPC to claim compensatory and punitive damages, and invoked additional consumer-protection provisions prohibiting merchants from contracting out of liability or requiring consumers to renounce statutory rights.

In the alternative, he initially attempted to characterise the email as a promise of a gift—a “promesse de donation”—under article 1812 CcQ, which would entitle him to damages equivalent to the advantages or expenses incurred in reliance on such a promise. However, at the hearing he ultimately abandoned this argument. The court agreed that article 1812 was inapplicable, as the concept of “donation” requires animus donandi (an actual intent to impoverish oneself by giving), which was inconsistent with the evidence that the boat email was an error swiftly followed by a corrective message and that the contest itself was not structured as a pure gift.

Defences raised by Tim Hortons

Tim Hortons (treating all four corporate defendants collectively) opposed authorization on several grounds, primarily contesting appearance of right under article 575(2) of the Code of Civil Procedure (Cpc). First, the defendants argued that there was no consumer contract of sale relating to the contest. They portrayed the contest as a separate, gratuitous arrangement governed solely by the official rules and sponsored by THAPFCI, stressing that participation in the contest—unlike purchasing coffee—did not itself involve a price in money. From this standpoint, the LPC was said to be inapplicable because it applies to contracts whose object is a good or service, not to a free promotional game. And even if the LPC applied, Tim Hortons maintained that articles 41 and 42 were not engaged because the summary email was a post-contractual communication that could not create or modify contractual obligations once the contest had ended.

Second, the defence relied heavily on clauses in the contest rules. These provisions stated that messages indicating a prize win that were sent “by error” or in any way contrary to the rules would be automatically null. The rules also contained broad disclaimers that the “Released Parties” (including the corporate defendants) would bear no responsibility for erroneous prize information, including any mis-sent prize notifications, and that participants agreed to release them from liability, waive entitlement to punitive or consequential damages, and resolve any dispute on an individual basis rather than through a class proceeding. In Tim Hortons’ view, these clauses, together with the fact that Deschâtelets had never actually revealed a boat win in-app during the contest period, meant that no contractual right to the boat could possibly arise.

Third, Tim Hortons challenged the claimed damages. It argued that the alleged moral prejudice (stress, disappointment and frustration) was no more than ordinary inconvenience and did not justify compensatory or punitive damages. The company also stressed that it had promptly issued a correction email explaining the error and reiterating that all true prizes were awarded according to the official rules, thereby allegedly reducing any fault to a technical glitch.

Finally, the defendants raised jurisdictional objections to the proposed Canada-wide class, emphasising that all corporate defendants were domiciled outside Québec and that the LPC does not have extraterritorial effect.

The court’s analysis of authorization criteria

The Superior Court analysed the application under article 575 Cpc, which requires a judge to authorize a class action if four conditions are met: (1) common legal or factual questions; (2) facts that appear to justify the conclusions sought (appearance of right); (3) a class composition that makes individual proceedings impractical; and (4) an adequate representative. The court also noted that it may decide pure issues of law at the authorization stage where all relevant facts are available, but that the threshold of appearance of right is intentionally low—a “simple possibility” of success, not proof on the balance of probabilities.

On the existence of a consumer contract, the court sided with Deschâtelets at this preliminary stage. Looking at the contest rules, particularly articles 3 and 4, the judge observed that participants earned “rebords de base” by purchasing specified “Produits admissibles” such as hot or cold beverages and certain food items. In practice, Deschâtelets accumulated 24 rims by purchasing eligible products over the contest period. This, the judge held, revealed that the contest was not gratuitous: the consumer had to buy something to obtain the right to participate. The sale of the beverage was therefore the primary contract, and the contest an accessory to that sale. That sufficed to establish the existence of a contract of sale of a good within the meaning of article 1708 CcQ and of a consumer contract governed by the LPC.

Because the contest was attached to a consumer sale, the email summarising contest results and announcing the boat and trailer was treated as a binding representation made in the context of contract performance. Articles 41 and 42 LPC, which are located in Title I and apply to contractual obligations, provide that goods or services must conform to a declaration or advertisement made by the merchant and that such declarations are binding. The court drew on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Richard v. Time Inc. to emphasise that violation of these statutory obligations gives rise to the remedial options in article 272 LPC without requiring proof of actual prejudice, and that the merchant cannot invoke absence of harm as a defence for breaches of Title I. At authorization, the judge therefore accepted that the plaintiff had shown an arguable case that Tim Hortons’ “you won a boat” representation bound it, notwithstanding later assertions that the email was a mistake.

With respect to Tim Hortons’ reliance on error, technical malfunction and the corrective email, the court concluded that these arguments went to the merits rather than authorization. The LPC provisions in question do not carve out a defence based on excusable mistake or force majeure, and they prohibit contractual clauses that would allow a merchant to unilaterally decide that an event has or has not occurred or to exempt itself from the consequences of its own acts. Similarly, contractual stipulations purporting to bar class actions or waive consumers’ statutory remedies are constrained by the LPC’s non-derogation and non-waiver rules. Whether the contest rules validly limited Tim Hortons’ liability, nullified erroneous prize messages, or effectively discharged the defendants would therefore be debated at trial, not used to defeat authorization.

On the claim for compensatory damages, the court found the pleadings adequate. The alleged emotional harm—intense excitement at “winning” a high-value boat, public sharing of the news with healthcare staff or family, subsequent humiliation and distress when the win was retracted, and time and effort spent seeking clarification—went beyond a minor annoyance. The media interviews and public testimonies from multiple recipients provided evidentiary support that many individuals had suffered similar experiences. At the authorization stage, the plaintiff was not required to quantify the damages, only to show that compensable damage could exist.

The punitive damages claim was also held to meet the appearance-of-right threshold. Applying the framework from Richard v. Time Inc., the court noted that punitive damages under article 272 LPC serve a preventive function and may be warranted where the merchant’s conduct shows serious disregard of consumer rights or repeated failures. The earlier 2023 contest error involving the miscommunication of a CAD 10,000 prepaid card and the inconsistent remedial response (a modest Tim Card for some but no comparable compensation for the 2024 boat email recipients) were cited as potentially indicative of recidivism and inadequate safeguards. The judge accepted that a full examination of Tim Hortons’ systems, error-prevention measures, and post-incident behaviour should occur at trial. The pleaded quantum of CAD 10,000 per class member was left for the merits stage, with the court explicitly inviting the plaintiff to reconsider and refine the amount in the eventual originating application, especially once the true size of the class is known.

By contrast, the court rejected any appearance of right under article 1812 CcQ. A promise of donation requires evidence that the promisor had an intention to impoverish itself without receiving anything in return. The record instead indicated that the boat email was an error corrected within hours, that the contest operated as a promotional device linked to purchases rather than a pure gift, and that the plaintiff had not alleged any specific “advantages conceded” or expenses incurred solely in reliance on a gratuitous promise. Deschâtelets therefore rightly renounced this legal basis during the hearing.

Class definition, jurisdiction and geographic scope

A major procedural issue concerned the geographic scope of the proposed class. Deschâtelets initially sought to represent all consumers in Canada who received the erroneous boat-win email or similar undelivered prize notifications. The defendants argued that Québec courts lacked jurisdiction over claims of non-Québec residents and that the LPC has no extraterritorial reach.

Applying articles 3148 and 3149 CcQ, the court examined the potential jurisdictional anchors: domicile or residence of defendants in Québec; existence of a Québec establishment whose activities are directly related to the dispute; occurrence of the fault, injury or damage in Québec; choice of forum agreements; or recognition of jurisdiction by the defendants. All four defendant corporations are domiciled outside Québec, and the plaintiff had not alleged that any had established a relevant “établissement” in Québec. Nor were there allegations that non-Québec class members suffered their injury in Québec or that any contractual obligations to those out-of-province consumers were to be performed in Québec. The contest rules were silent on forum selection, and the defendants had not otherwise submitted to Québec jurisdiction for non-Québec claims.

Additionally, the court stressed that the LPC is a Québec statute meant to protect Québec consumers and does not apply extraterritorially. Because the plaintiff’s sole surviving legal basis was the LPC, only Québec residents could invoke it. As a result, the court restricted the class to Québec consumers only, eliminating the claims of consumers elsewhere in Canada.

The judge then refined the class definition to ensure objective and rational criteria. The authorised class consists of all Québec consumers who, in March or April 2024, received a Tim Hortons email in the context of the 2024 Roll Up To Win promotion indicating that they had won a Tracker Targa 18 WT 2024 boat and its trailer, where that boat and trailer were never actually delivered. Consumers who obtained their contest entries through the no-purchase written-submission method (sending a letter with a 50-word personal anecdote) were expressly excluded, as the plaintiff had not participated via that route and did not intend to represent them. The court further declined to authorise claims relating to “other prizes” beyond the boat and trailer, since the pleadings did not contain specific allegations about different prize types or factual scenarios.

On common questions and class composition, the court found the statutory requirements easily satisfied. The central issues—whether the email representation created an obligation to deliver the boat and trailer under the LPC, whether the class is entitled to the value of the boat instead, whether compensatory and punitive damages are available, and in what amount—are common to all members. Evidence of widespread media coverage, thousands of individuals joining an online “Tim Hortons ‘you won a boat’” group, and more than 3,300 people having registered through the plaintiff’s counsel’s website demonstrated both the numerosity and dispersion of potential class members. Individual proceedings or mandates would be impractical.

Adequacy of the representative and defendants

The court was satisfied that Deschâtelets is an adequate representative. He is a clear member of the defined class, has a personal interest in the relief sought, has taken active steps to engage counsel and understand the issues, and has no apparent conflict with other class members. His counsel has prior experience in consumer-protection class actions.

On the defence side, Tim Hortons asked the court to limit the class action to one entity—THAPFCI—arguing that Restaurant Brands International Inc. (RBI), Restaurant Brands International Limited Partnership (RBILP) and The TDL Group Corp. were merely indirect parents or franchise-related entities with no role in administering the contest or app. The court declined to narrow the list of defendants at the authorization stage. Noting that the relevant contract is the sale of beverages and the accessory contest, and that the official rules specifically mention TDL and RBI in different contexts, the judge held it was premature to decide which entity or entities are contractual partners for LPC purposes. The possibility of solidarity among multiple related corporate actors remained open for the merits.

Outcome and relief ordered

In the result, the Superior Court partially granted Deschâtelets’ application for authorization. The court authorised a class action, in the form of a proceeding seeking (1) specific performance (delivery of the boat and trailer) or alternatively their monetary value, (2) compensatory damages, and (3) punitive damages under article 272 LPC. Deschâtelets was formally appointed representative plaintiff for the refined Québec-only class. The judgment delineates the common questions of law and fact, confirms that the action will proceed in the judicial district of Montréal, and leaves to a later stage the issues of notice to class members, who will bear the costs of those notices, and the opt-out deadline.

Because this is an authorization decision, no final determination is made on liability or quantum of damages. The court does not fix any specific dollar amounts for compensatory, punitive or collective recovery, nor for individual class members. It expressly states that the appropriateness of ordering delivery of boats versus awarding their cash value, the existence and extent of moral prejudice, and the proper level of punitive damages will all be determined at trial on the merits, after full evidence and argument.

The successful party at this stage is therefore Jonathan Deschâtelets, as representative of the authorised class, since his authorization request is granted in substantial part and the defendants’ attempt to defeat the action at the threshold is rejected. The court awards costs of justice (frais de justice) in his favour, but excludes, for now, the costs associated with publishing class-action notices, reserving that question for later. The judgment does not specify any monetary amount for these costs, nor any sum for damages or collective recovery. Accordingly, while the plaintiff has cleared the critical hurdle of authorization and positioned the class to pursue significant remedies, the total monetary award, including damages and costs, remains undetermined at this stage.