Souvlaki

Not sure who all these "frenchmen" are. I understood the complainant to have been Canadian.

KenHamer

Clearly if someone speaks a language other than English they're not really Canadian.

CloudsBelow

Well said ^

Tedgrrrr

this jack a$$ is like that handicapped guy in California who fell out of an avocado tree while intoxicated and now goes around measuring the height of toilet paper dispensers, and the height of sinks, and then sues if they are half an inch off just so he can get $$$. I think he's sued over 500 restaurants already.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?se...les&id=7655664

At least this national post reporter exposed this frenchman fraudster!!

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...nd-to-grow-up/


To borrow someone else's words, if someone tried to pull this crap back in the 19th century, they would have been beaten up and ran out of town. These days they probably make better livings than most SE's

PhotoJim

Canadian soft drinks usually have real sugar in them. Sugar isn't tariffed in Canada, and corn syrup isn't subsidized like it is in the US.

Back to our normal topic. Airlines should serve Canadians in both French and English. C'est tout.

tcook052

+1

beef

Frenchman, englishman? Litiguous leech is the best name for this pièce de merde (pardon my french) who would have the rest of us pay him for a trivial misstep. (The money comes from the customers one way or another!)

NordsFan

Again, if you are referring to the trivial misstep as the "soda debacle", you are off track. The choice of drink brand had nothing to do with the situation.

The facts of the case are clear, unambiguous and admitted by AC itself: AC breached its statutory obligations under the OLA and ACPPA in 4 instances. In other words, AC broke the law and confessed that it did.

The question arising from the admitted facts is whether or not the plaintiffs are entitled to any monetary compensation, and if so, how much.

Also under review was the issue of whether or not the Montreal Convention had any bearing on AC's obligations under federal language law and on the determination of damages.

The FCA found that a monetary award was warranted and set that amount at $1,500 plus costs (said costs having been agreed to by AC a long time ago). Hurray Mr. Thibodeau, don't spend all of your windfall on Gitanes and smelly cheese !

The red herring of the claim for compensatory damages in the amount of $500,000 was settled, and rejected by the Court, over a year ago. It's fun to harken back to that non-issue again and again and again as it helps maintain the popular image of Thibobeau as just another greedy bad-guy (i.e. a Frog). Truth is, he was shot down by the Court and that whole issue went away. Mr. Thibodeau lost.

The other important question from AC's perspective was whether or not the airline has a "systemic" problem in meeting its obligations under OLA and ACPPA. The FC trial division said "yes" and was on a track to order the company to take corrective actions that would have been very costly (language training, crew hiring and scheduling, etc.).

The FCA has now found that no such systemic problem exists, hence no need for expensive structural changes at AC or QK. This issue had the potential of costing AC lots of money, costs which would indeed have been passed along to the consumer. That issue is also settled. Mr. Thibodeau lost.

It is no secret that Mr. Thibodeau is a long-standing activist whose motivated intention is to hold AC to its obligations under the laws of Canada. If you don't like the law as it is now, write to your MP and ask for the OLA and the ACPPA to be amended or completely abrogated.

It is truly disappointing to see how easily objective analysis of important issues can be set aside in favour of name-calling because we don't like the messenger (i.e. a Frog) or because we prefer to believe the simplistic (almost childish) version presented in the newspaper.

I suppose that reading the actual court decisions, where the facts and the law are examined under rules of evidence and and thoughtful analysis, not the rules of a Grade 7 schoolyard, is too hard.

That's where we all lose.

Tedgrrrr

I can guarantee you that Canadian coke does not have real sugar... they have a different name for High Fructose Corn Syrup in Canada - "glucose-fructose" - it's definitely not real sugar. Try a Mexican coke/pepsi/7up/sprite and you'll see the difference... also, in Montreal they have Kosher Coke during passover which is made from real sugar... there would be no seasonal need for "real sugar" coke if the real version already had it...

and going to back normal topic - french is an economic burden on the country - businesses should deliver services in whatever languages makes financial sense... if "french" is profitable, there will be french. If it isn't, then no french... if Porter sees a demand for french, they can offer it, and consumers will switch to Porter, or to whatever other airline can accommodate their linguistic PREFERENCE

drdrma

You know what else is an economic burden? Those pesky safety standards, we should ditch those too.

KenHamer

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.448 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

I'm guessing that most or all of that $1500 was consumed by his legal costs.

tcook052

The award was actually $3000 to the couple, Michel and Lynda Thibodeau, which is $1500 per person and is likely what previous poster meant one would expect if suing as an individual.

But yes, I would agree that the lawyers would seem to be the only ones who really made any money in the case.

NordsFan

As was the case in first instance before the FC, Mrs. and Mr. Thibodeau represented themselves. Per page 47 of the FCA's decision:

APPEARANCES:

Louise-Hélène Sénécal
David Rhéault
FOR THE APPELLANT (Air Canada)

Michel Thibodeau
Lynda Thibodeau
ON THEIR OWN BEHALF

Pascale Giguère
Kevin Shaar
FOR THE INTERVENER (Commissioner of OL)

SOLICITORS OF RECORD:

Air Canada Centre Law Branch
Dorval, Quebec
FOR THE APPELLANT (AC)

Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages
Legal Affairs Branch
Ottawa, Ontario
FOR THE INTERVENER (COL)

Tedgrrrr

weird - AC used its own in-house lawyers... they should have brought in some top gun U.S. Counsel (external) to advise Toronto Counsel (external), with the latter arguing the case...

AA_EXP09

To add to that case, why were there Spanish speaking FAs on an AA LAX MIA flight?