500-17-095253-160
61
[435] It appeared clear to the Court that Plaintiff’s lawyers had some reserve
about this claim and more particularly about the amount claimed.
[436] In the Court’s view, they were right.
[437] In his testimony, Plaintiff was not more expansive. He limited himself to
saying that the whole period where he had to negotiate his departure both with
Manulife and the Defendants brought its share of stress and anxiety. The same
about the incident of August 22, 2013.
[438] To be compensated, moral damages, like all other damages, must be
proven.119 And the evidence must be more than “tenuous”120.
[439] The evidence presented at trial as to the stress these events might have
caused on Plaintiff was at best sketchy.
[440] As we know, a claim of moral damages for stress must rise-up to a
substantive level in order to be compensated. As humans, we all experience a
certain level of stress which is a normal component of life.
[441] That is why, to be compensable in law, stress must attain a level that
actually caused harm.
[442] The Supreme Court Chief Justice explains this idea as follows:
[…] psychological disturbance that rises to the level of personal injury must
be distinguished from psychological upset. Personal injury at law connotes
serious trauma or illness: see Hinz v. Berry, [1970] 2 Q.B. 40 (C.A.), at p.
42; Page v. Smith, at p. 189; Linden and Feldthusen, at pp. 425- 27. The
law does not recognize upset, disgust, anxiety, agitation or other mental
states that fall short of injury. I would not purport to define compensable
injury exhaustively, except to say that it must be serious and prolonged and
rise above the ordinary annoyances, anxieties and fears that people living
in society routinely, if sometimes reluctantly, accept. The need to accept
such upsets rather than seek redress in tort is what I take the Court of
Appeal to be expressing in its quote from Vanek v. Great Atlantic & Pacific
Co. of Canada (1999), 48 O.R. (3d) 228 (C.A.): “Life goes on” (para. 60).
Quite simply, minor and transient upsets do not constitute personal injury,
and hence do not amount to damage.121
[Underlined added]
119
Jean-Louis Baudouin et Yvon Renaud, Code civil du Québec annoté, cited in Syndicat des cols
bleus regroupés de Montréal, (SCFP, section locale 301) c. Coll, 2009 QCCA 708 () at
paragr. 100.
120
In Orchestre métropolitain du Grand Montréal v. Rescigno, 2006 QCCA 6 (), paragr. 34,
the Court of Appeal quashed an award of $50 000 for moral damages on the basis that the
proof in that regard was at best very teneous.
Mustapha v. Culligan of Canada Ltd, 2008 SCC 27, [2008] 2 S.C.R. 114, paragr. 9.
121