Appeals and Other Recourses Against a Judgment: Appeal Lawyer in Gatineau

Situations we can help you with

• You just lost a trial and you believe the judge erred in law.
• You received a judgment and do not know whether you have an appeal as of right or need leave to appeal.
• The judgment is enforceable immediately and you want it stayed while you appeal.
• A default judgment was rendered against you and you were never told about the hearing.
• You discovered decisive evidence only after the judgment was rendered.
• The other side has appealed your win and you must respond.
• You lost at the Administrative Housing Tribunal and want to know whether the decision can be appealed.
• A public body made a decision affecting you and you believe it exceeded its authority.
• You exhausted an administrative tribunal’s internal review process and nothing changed.
• You want an appeal dismissed early because it was filed purely to delay enforcement.
• You lost in the Court of Appeal and wonder whether the Supreme Court of Canada would take the case.
• Your previous lawyer withdrew and the appeal delay is still running.

Our appellate services

• Merits assessment: review of the judgment, the transcripts and the record, with a candid opinion on real prospects.
• Immediate verification of the applicable delay and of the regime — appeal as of right or by leave.
• Drafting, notification and filing of the notice of appeal.
• Drafting and arguing an application for leave to appeal.
• Applications for a stay of execution and contestation of provisional execution.
• Drafting the appellant’s factum or brief, and the respondent’s factum.
• Preparation of schedules and the joint record, in compliance with the Court’s formal rules.
• Motions to dismiss an appeal that is abusive, dilatory or manifestly unfounded.
• Oral argument before the panel of the Court of Appeal.
• Applications in retraction of judgment.
• Judicial review before the Superior Court and internal review applications before administrative bodies.
• Applications for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
• Second opinions on a judgment, without taking over the entire file.

How recourses against a judgment work in Québec

Appeal as of right, or by leave

In civil matters, the Court of Appeal of Québec hears appeals from final judgments of the Superior Court and the Court of Québec. Two regimes coexist. The appeal lies as of right where the value of the matter in dispute in appeal is $60,000 or more. Below that threshold, you must obtain leave from a judge of the Court of Appeal. That has been the rule since the 2016 reform, and it changes the strategy entirely: instead of simply filing a notice of appeal, you must persuade a judge that the question deserves to be submitted to the Court — because it raises a matter of principle, a new issue, or a question of law on which the case law is contradictory. Other judgments are appealable only by leave, for example in judicial review or execution matters.

The delay is the critical constraint. It is generally thirty days from the notice of judgment, or from the date of the judgment when rendered at the hearing. That delay is strict. Certain statutes provide different periods, notably in divorce and in bankruptcy and insolvency matters. In exceptional circumstances a party may ask to be relieved from the default, but no strategy should ever rely on it.

One reminder saves many files: an appeal is not a second trial. The Court of Appeal does not hear the witnesses again and does not reweigh the evidence from scratch. It intervenes on errors of law, and on errors of fact only where they are palpable and overriding. An appeal that simply repeats the trial argument is lost before it starts.

After the notice of appeal: factum, brief and dismissal

Once the appeal is filed, the appellant must produce a factum within three months of the notice of appeal and the respondent within the following two months, unless a case management decision provides otherwise (art. 373 CCP). Where the appeal proceeds by brief rather than by factum — notably in family matters, matters of integrity, status or capacity, or against a judgment rendered in the course of a proceeding — the deadlines are set by the clerk or by a judge of the Court of Appeal (art. 374 CCP). These documents follow strict formal rules on structure, length, schedules and the joint record. A non-compliant factum is returned, and lost time is rarely recovered.

The respondent is not confined to waiting. A motion to dismiss the appeal can be brought where the appeal is abusive, dilatory or manifestly unfounded. It is presented early and, when successful, spares months of procedure and substantial costs.

Stay of execution: buying time that matters

Winning the right to appeal is of little use if the judgment must be satisfied tomorrow morning. As a rule, an appeal suspends execution of the judgment (art. 355 CCP). Two important qualifications. The law itself makes certain judgments provisionally executory notwithstanding appeal — notably those concerning support, custody arrangements, parental authority or eviction (art. 660 CCP) — in which case a stay must be sought from a judge of the Court of Appeal (art. 661 CCP). And the trial court may have ordered provisional execution notwithstanding appeal, typically where urgency or the risk of serious prejudice justified it. In that case, a judge of the Court of Appeal must be asked for a stay. The application is prepared quickly and argued on concrete grounds: the seriousness of the appeal, the prejudice immediate execution would cause, and the balance of inconvenience between the parties. It is often the first battle of an appellate file, and sometimes the decisive one.

When it is not an appeal: retraction and judicial review

Not every judgment is attacked by appeal. An application in retraction targets a judgment rendered in circumstances that prevented a party from properly defending: a default resulting from surprise or impossibility to act, the later discovery of decisive evidence that could not have been produced in time, or a judgment obtained through false documents. The delays are short: the application must be notified promptly after the ground becomes known and presented to the court within thirty days of its notification. It cannot be brought more than six months after the judgment. These delays are strict.

Judicial review, by contrast, targets decisions of administrative tribunals and public bodies. The Superior Court exercises a power of review and superintendence over those decision-makers. It does not ask whether it would have decided differently: it generally verifies whether the decision was reasonable, and whether the process was lawful — jurisdiction, procedural fairness, adequacy of reasons. The application must be served within a reasonable time from the contested decision, and any internal review provided by the governing statute normally has to be exhausted first.

The Administrative Housing Tribunal deserves a specific note, because many Ottawa-area property owners assume Ontario’s review routes apply. They do not. Tribunal decisions on rent fixing, modification of a lease condition, rent revision, recovery of a debt referred to in section 73 of the Act respecting the Administrative Housing Tribunal, and authorization to deposit rent cannot be appealed at all. Others may be appealed to the Court of Québec, but only with leave of a judge, and the application must be filed within thirty days of learning of the decision. That delay is also strict. Depending on the ground invoked, an application to retract the decision before the Tribunal itself is sometimes the route to favour.

One last door remains. A party dissatisfied with a Court of Appeal judgment may apply for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, generally within sixty days of that judgment. Leave is not granted because a decision is wrong; it is granted where the case raises an issue of public importance or an important question of law. Very few applications succeed. An honest assessment made early avoids substantial and pointless costs.

Why bring your file to Virtulex avocats

• We are a litigation firm and we plead both at first instance and before appellate courts.
• We are comfortable with complex files where several areas of law intersect, which is common on appeal.
• Me William Desrochers teaches at the École du Barreau du Québec; civil procedure and legal drafting are part of his daily practice.
• As an accredited mediator, he will say so when a negotiated resolution beats an appeal — and will negotiate it.
• We accept second-opinion mandates, including where the file was conducted by another lawyer.
• Service in English and in French, remotely or at the office, with online booking.