MONTREAL -- Have you used a parking meter in Montreal or Quebec City in the past five years? Then you may be eligible to join a class action lawsuit.
On Wednesday, a Quebec judge approved a class action lawsuit on behalf of anyone who used a parking meter in those two cities since June 2015.
The defendant in the lawsuit, Catherine Bergeron Duchesne, says parking in Montreal and Quebec City does not allow for payments to be accumulated. Therefore, if someone decides to add time to their parking before it has expired, the second payment does not add on to the first, it simply replaces it.
In addition, she says when a new user parks their vehicle there is no indication whether there is still time left on the meter.
“Before with mechanical parking meters, they allowed you to see if there was time left,” said one of the defendant’s lawyers in this case, David Bourgoin. “It accumulated no matter who paid it.”
In their ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed, the judge also questioned if it was possible for Montreal and Quebec City to accumulate payments and if so, he wondered why both cities weren’t doing it.
Both the City of Montreal and Quebec City declined to comment.
Lawyers Maxime Ouellet, David Bourgoin, Benoit Lussier, Sylvie Garneau, Chantal Bruyere, Caroline Gelac, Raphael Lescop, and Christine Makar are working on the case.
