A group of coachmen who are trying to invalidate the by-law adopted by the City of Montreal in 2018 to ban horse-drawn carriages from its streets have been unsuccessful in the Court of Appeal.
The carriage services company Lucky Luc and six other plaintiffs had addressed the highest court in the province in the hope of overturning a judgment unfavorable to their case rendered in Superior Court in September 2020.
They pleaded, among other things, that the City of Montreal did not have sufficient powers to prohibit horse-drawn carriages in its streets.
Moreover, the Superior Court did not have the right to refuse their legal recourse on the basis that it had been presented beyond a certain time after the adoption of the by-law of the City of Montreal aimed at prohibiting horse-drawn carriages, they argued.
However, if it is true that the Superior Court could not sweep their appeal because of this delay, the City was within its rights to adopt this ban on horse-drawn carriages, ruled the judges of the Court of Appeal in their decision handed down Wednesday.
Remember that the date of December 31, 2019 was chosen by the Plante administration to allow caléchiers to cease their activities by taking advantage of “a transition period of more than a year”.