The collective action brought by former hockey player Carl Latulippe against the major junior hockey community in Quebec for abuse suffered while he was playing for the Chicoutimi Saguenéens can move forward.
In a decision rendered Tuesday morning, Judge Sophie Lavallée, of the Quebec Court of Appeal, rejects the appeal request from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, its Canadian counterpart (the Canadian Hockey League which oversees hockey major junior in the country) and the 18 teams of the QMJHL (today called the Maritimes Quebec Junior Hockey League).
No legal relationship?
They criticized Judge Jacques Bouchard of the Superior Court of Quebec “for having abdicated his filtering role” by authorizing a collective action targeting the League and all of its teams when there was no link of right between Carl Latulippe and “almost all” of the teams, since he had not played for them.
According to them, in the absence of a legal link, Judge Bouchard erred in concluding that it was necessary to hear the merits of the case to determine whether or not there is joint and several liability.
The class action authorized on April 10 by the Superior Court targets “all hockey players who, since 1969, suffered abuse while they were minors and playing in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.”
The League and its teams also argued that 13 of these teams were not even formed at the time of the alleged abuse.
The appeal criteria “are not met”
Judge Lavallée first notes that “the applicants therefore do not seem to dispute that the respondent has, apparently, a legal link with the leagues (the QMJHL and the Canadian Hockey League)”. She recalls that the test for obtaining an appeal in the case of a collective action is “demanding” and “that the burden to establish for obtaining permission is very heavy. The appeal must be reserved for exceptional cases. »
“I am of the opinion that in this case, these criteria are not satisfied,” she wrote from the outset.
The magistrate argues that at the authorization stage, the court “resolves a purely procedural question […] In doing so, it must not consider the merits of the dispute, a stage which begins only after the authorization request has been granted.
“There is a defensible case”
She emphasizes that by “exercising the necessary caution, (the judge) exercises his discretion not to immediately decide this question”. This question of joint liability of the League and other teams is “not a pure question of law” and, therefore, “it is not an error at the authorization stage to decide that it will be decided at the “substantively”, that is to say when it will be debated in due form.
She notes that, in his decision, Judge Bouchard “reproduces the allegations of misconduct, supporting documents, which appear to justify the conclusions sought, and on their basis, he concludes that an arguable case exists.”
Carl Latulippe played for the Saguenéens de Chicoutimi and the Voltigeurs de Drummondville in 1994-95 then for the now defunct Harfangs de Beauport in 1995-96. The abuse he allegedly suffered occurred while he was playing for the Saguenéens.
Carl Latulippe took 30 years before telling his story, revealed by the daily The Press in April 2023. He notably explained that, during bus trips, veterans of the team had asked the recruits to “take off their clothes and masturbate”, that they were given a short time to ejaculate and that those Those who failed would be locked in the bus toilets. Barely 16 years old, Carl Latulippe said he was also locked naked in the toilet with other teammates for long periods.
Carl Latulippe, a first draft choice, left the Saguenéens after only six games. He returned to major junior hockey with the Voltigeurs later in the season to finish his career the following year with the Harfangs.