Quebecor’s CEO and majority shareholder, Pierre Karl Péladeau, has instituted “abusive legal proceedings” against one of the lawyers involved in his divorce, demanding $60,000 from her “unreasonably and a misappropriation of the objectives of the judiciary,” the Quebec court ruled and demanded ordered him to pay fees which he refused to pay.
Posted at 5:00 am
Tristan Peloquin La Presse
The dispute dates back to 2019 when now-retired attorney Nicole Parent filed a $54,543 lawsuit demanding the businessman pay his last three bills that he refused to pay.
Between January 2016 and October 2018, Me Parent billed him a total of $1,047,101 in connection with his “very controversial and acrimonious” divorce case with host Julie Snyder, which required “interventions on a regular basis.” “The evidence shows that they [Me Parent] was fully committed, available and invested to protect her client’s best interests and to provide him with appropriate advice,” noted Judge Pierre Cliche in his 20-page judgment, which was heavily edited to protect the privacy of Mr. Péladeau and his family to protect. .
In response to the attorney’s lawsuit, Mr. Péladeau himself counterclaimed, seeking $60,000 in damages for “moral damage” he allegedly suffered from “professional negligence, which he accused Mr. Parent of.” He accused her of “failing to comply with her obligation to provide information and advice” because she had not spoken to him about the possibility of appealing against an interim judgment that had been handed down as part of her divorce file and because she had not redacted confidential information from the court file, filed in court in connection with her $54,543 lawsuit.
“No reasonable chance of success”
However, the decision, which Mr Péladeau planned to appeal, “had no reasonable prospect of success,” according to the court. If his lawyer made a mistake by not discussing the possibility of appealing the case with him, this is “at the lower end of the scale of objective gravity,” the court ruled. Regarding the unredacted information he accuses the lawyer of having published in his lawsuit, the judge points out that almost two and a half years after hearing about it, Mr Péladeau complained about what “was a reprehensible recklessness of pointing out part”.
Mr Péladeau did not respond to our request for comment on this article. My parent, currently out of the country, could not be reached.
The facts as a whole “make you sweat [de M. Péladeau] an intention to apply undue pressure [Me Parent] with the aim that she agrees to enter into an agreement that will enable her to avoid paying her fees or receive a substantial reduction in them,” underlined Judge Cliche.
His $60,000 lawsuit against his attorney “constitutes an abusive legal process,” “manifestly without merit,” and “brought for an improper purpose, namely, to improperly settle his claim,” the judge adds, ordering the businessman to pay the $54,543 plus interest, to Mr. Parent, and legal fees arising out of the two lawsuits.
As part of his divorce filing, Mr. Péladeau also had to respond to a $92,000 lawsuit filed by attorney Anne-France Goldwater, who briefly represented him. Their dispute was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.