Defendants added to fuel spill lawsuit

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) is now suing the property owner and company involved in the fuel spill that happened nearly one year ago in Chateauguay. The band council had initially only filed its lawsuit against the City of Chateauguay, only adding the two new defendants late in December.

The MCK is now seeking $617,000 in damages from all three defendants –– up from $500,000 it had initially demanded earlier in the summer. The lawsuit before Quebec Superior Court was first filed back in late July.

The band council maintains diesel fuel from the spill in the city’s industrial sector traversed into Kahnawake, a result of the city’s fire department being negligent in its duty to manage and control the spill. It led to a contamination of the Suzanne River in the community, the MCK maintains, which prompted a costly cleanup.

The newly modified application now alleges La Pétrolière N&R Sol Inc. and the property owner associated with the address where the spill happened – a numbered company, 9251-4991 Quebec Inc. – are just as much at fault as the city is.

Legal counsel for the MCK brought forward new allegations against the late Michel Boisvert, the president and shareholder of La Pétrolière, in particular. The company, known for selling heating oil out of 2325 Ford Boulevard, owned the fuel tanker that spilled there on February 1, according to the MCK’s application. That business is no longer active, according to Quebec’s business registry, which listed it as being under the control of liquidators.

It’s important to note Boisvert himself isn’t being sued. The man passed away in late February shortly after the spill, after suffering a brain aneurysm.

The MCK is alleging Boisvert failed to adequately clean up the diesel spill, citing two separate non-compliance warnings sent to him and his company by Quebec’s environmental ministry back in late February. Those letters mentioned his failure to inform the ministry about the spill as soon as it happened, and also cited him for taking too long to get a cleanup started, according to the MCK’s application.

Up until that point, the cleanup had involved Boisvert collecting some of the diesel fuel, which he promised to set aside elsewhere, as well as the laying of absorbent material by the city’s fire department.

“Notwithstanding Mr. Boisvert’s alleged commitments to control the fuel spill and decontaminate the site, the tanker remained at the place for several days after the fuel spill, as did the absorbent applied by the fire department,” the MCK alleged in its legal filing.

The band council maintains the property owner is also at fault because the remediation work it eventually did carry out, after Boisvert’s death, didn’t extend to Kahnawake. That cleanup began in April and was carried out by a specialized cleanup company it had hired. 

The Eastern Door requested an interview with MCK grand chief Cody Diabo about this lawsuit, but couldn’t arrange an interview before deadline.

Legal counsel for the city and property owner have since notified the court they intend to contest the suit. La Pétrolière, meanwhile, has yet to formally respond with legal representation.

Chateauguay has yet to fill a detailed defense in response to the allegations brought forward by the MCK as of this July, which have yet to be proven in court.

In April, Quebec’s environmental ministry told The Eastern Door it didn’t believe the spill that happened in the city’s industrial sector in February is linked to diesel fuel found in the Suzanne River in Kahnawake just days later.

Éric Allard, the city’s mayor, has said similarly, disputing the spill site in Chateauguay as the source of the pollution found in Kahnawake early last year.

The Eastern Door reached out to the lawyers representing the property owner named in the lawsuit, but no comment was provided by deadline. The Eastern Door also reached out to Éric Levesque, listed as a liquidator at La Pétrolière, but also did not hear back.

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Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly reported that the band council blamed La Pétrolière for commissioning remediation work of the site of the spill that did not extend to Kahnawake. In fact, Council's filings maintain it is the property owner involved – 9251-4991 Quebec Inc – that hired a specialized cleanup company to do the work. The Eastern Door regrets this error.