Did a 17-year-old student who filmed a teacher from her school on the dance floor of a bar last month commit a crime of “lèse-majesté”? Did the private Montreal school that expelled her after the video went viral release the ‘heavy cavalry’? The parents of this teenager are claiming $215,000 from Collège Notre-Dame.
An “excess of jurisdiction”, a “flagrant injustice” imbued with “partiality, arbitrary, abusive and bad faith”: the prosecution does not mince its words with regard to the decision of the Collège Notre-Dame to expel a student from 5e secondary.
The story begins last February, in a bar located on Saint-Laurent Boulevard in Montreal.
It is, we read in the lawsuit, a “discotheque frequented by several minors, since its doormen do not systematically require identification documents from their customers, particularly when it comes to young girls well-dressed according to clothing trends and fashion”.
During the evening, the teenager recognizes a teacher from her college who is dancing.
“She finds it funny to meet a College teacher in a disco” and, while she is “under the influence of alcohol”, undertakes to film him for a few seconds.
The video sequence only “shows the teacher participating in a public activity, in this case dancing”, “in a public place, in this case the dance floor of a nightclub”.
The man “appears in the middle of a crowd of individuals who are also dancing […] and he does not perform or appear to be inappropriate or sexually connoted,” reads the lawsuit.
The student sends the video to friends via the Instagram application’s private messaging system, “far from suspecting that some of the nine friends who received it[e] broadcast it widely and post it on social media, let alone that said video would go viral among College students.”
A “major breach” of the Code of Life
Things pick up a few days later. The student is met by the management, his phone is confiscated. She is “detained against her will, for several hours, and subjected to inquisitorial questioning, without any justification”, according to the prosecution.
Less than a week after the evening at the bar, her parents are summoned to the college where they are told that their daughter is expelled for what the College considers to be a major infraction of the institution’s Code of Life and a contravention of the school’s contract. conditional admission to which the student subscribed in June 2022, following other breaches of the Code of Life.
The parents then tried to enroll their daughter in two private establishments in Montreal and in a public school in Outremont, which refused her for lack of space.
She therefore “risks” having to “have to complete her secondary studies in the “public” and see her efforts of the last four years wiped out,” reads the lawsuit, which also alleges that the quality of education at her secondary school in district “is in no way comparable to that of the College”.
Believing that Collège Notre-Dame wanted to make their daughter “an example to the student community”, the parents are claiming damages of $215,000 on behalf of their daughter and in their own name.
They also asked the Court to suspend the deportation of their daughter. However, since the filing of the lawsuit, Notre-Dame College has agreed to reinstate its student.
“We settled the aspect of the injunction amicably [dimanche]. The child has been reinstated and has been following his lessons since Monday, without any admission, with respect to contesting the merits, “explained the parents’ lawyer, Mr.e Daniel Pellerin, at The Press.
Despite this agreement, the Court will still have to decide the merits of the dispute and the question of the damages claimed.
The Notre-Dame College did not want to comment on the case because it is a minor student.
A “particularly disproportionate” sanction
Professor at the Public Law Research Center at the University of Montreal, Pierre Trudel read the lawsuit at the request of The Press.
It begs the question of how far the school’s ability to impose disciplinary measures goes for an activity that takes place outside of school, and that’s probably what the court will have to consider if it ends up come before the judge. Is there a sufficient connection?
Pierre Trudel, professor at the Public Law Research Center at the University of Montreal
Mr. Trudel observes that the link in this case is “a bit tenuous”.
The prosecution alleges that the student’s dismissal is “out of all proportion to the alleged facts”. Professor Pierre Trudel also believes that the “penalty is particularly disproportionate and severe”.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Professor at the Public Law Research Center at the University of Montreal Pierre Trudel
” I am at university. In general, it takes more than that to deserve such a severe sanction,” says Mr. Trudel.
And basically, did the teenager have the right to film a man dancing in the middle of the night?
The professor refers to the famous Duclos case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
“In 1998, the Court did say that you cannot publish the image of a person without their consent, unless there is a reason in the public interest to do so,” he explains. But there are nuances: there are several “degrees of public interest”, says the professor, and the person must also be “clearly recognizable”.
Making a video “of a crowd of people on a dance floor, without targeting an individual, is allowed, it’s not something illegal,” continues Mr. Trudel, who does not has not seen the video in question.
As social media increasingly becomes the extension of schools, this is an “interesting case,” concludes the law professor.
With the collaboration of Louis-Samuel Perron, The Press