Pursued by employees, customers and suppliers for tens of thousands of unpaid dollars, sommelier Catherine Levasseur even gives a hard time to the courts, who are unable to reach her.
• Read also: Employees, suppliers and customers chase this sommelier who multiplied the excuses not to pay them
• Read also: Looking for sommelier Catherine Levasseur
In two cases, legal representatives were unable to notify the 50-year-old sommelier that she was the subject of legal proceedings.
Painter contractor Jean-François Bergevin is claiming more than $12,000 from Catherine Levasseur, who hired him in the spring of 2022 to repaint Saperlipopette, a restaurant she was then preparing to open in Old Longueuil. He was never paid for the work done.
“I went to get a check, the check bounced. She told me she was in the hospital. And there was never an answer afterwards,” he sums up.
Faced with the situation, the contractor went to court last October. But the bailiff has not yet been able to reach Catherine Levasseur in person, underlines Mr. Bergevin.
“The addresses are not the right ones, she is not there!” deplores the painter, who is thus unable to notify Catherine Levasseur of his lawsuit.
- Listen to the testimony of Eric Santerre, President and CEO of Tök Communications, available as a podcast via :
500 unpaid oysters
The same goes for the company Huîtres en mouvement, which provided some 500 oysters to Catherine Levasseur for special evenings organized at the Buvette bar à vin futé, in Old Longueuil, in the spring of 2021.
“She never paid. We provided the oysters, the mignonettes, the lemons, the service, we provided the employees, we opened the oysters!”, Plagues the owner, Christopher Recine, who claims more than $1,700 from him in small claims.
Kathryne Lamontagne
Christopher Recine, of Oysters in motion
But the lawsuit still could not be notified to Catherine Levasseur, who closed her restaurant and changed her address, deplores Mr. Recine.
“Where is she hiding?”
The president of Tök communication, Eric Santerre, is also suing the sommelier and has retained the services of a collection agency to try to find the some $ 1,000 that Catherine Levasseur owed him for having ensured his public relations, in the summer of 2020. But the restorer is nowhere to be found.
“The address on file is never the right one. It’s his spouse, or his mother… it’s like all the addresses don’t relate, so they’re as if unable to tell him the situation. Where is that woman? Where is she hiding?” he asks.
Our Bureau of Investigation revealed Monday morning that Catherine Levasseur – who also uses the names Gagné, Levasseur Gagné or L. Gagné – has opened and closed at least three restaurants since the start of the pandemic, each time leaving unpaid bills and wages. . More than twenty employees, suppliers and customers are now claiming thousands of dollars from him.
Hospitalization, death in those around him, breakups: the 50-year-old woman multiplied the excuses to avoid settling her debts, before ceasing to give signs of life to her creditors.
The sommelier – who made headlines in 2013 for having organized fake wine tastings all over Quebec – is also the target of a dozen civil lawsuits.
With Ian Gemme and Marie-Christine Trottier
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