McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 25
The Kravitz Case: A Procedural Leap?
C. Keenan LaPierre*
The Supreme Court’s decision in General Motors Products of
Canada LtdT v. Kravitz’ appears to have aroused both interest and
controversy in the months since it was rendered. That it should
interest the legal community is no surprise since the questions
raised in Kravitz had never been put to the Supreme Court in a
case on appeal from Quebec, despite the increasing level of interest
in consumer issues over the past few years. This controversy should
be reassuring to those jurists who find themselves uncomfortable
with the manner in which the result was reached.2
This comment is not intended to provide an assessment of the
judgment’s impact on the parties, nor even of its repercussions
on consumers or manufacturers. For lawyers and judges entrusted
with the care and keeping of our judicial system, it is rather the
process of decision-making which must be evaluated, since the
results in a -given case will surely be fair if the judicial process is
working as it should.
Mr Kravitz asked the Superior Court, at the conclusion of his
pleadings, for three things:
1) that his tender of the vehicle be declared valid;
2) that the sale of the vehicle by the dealer Plamondon to him
be cancelled and annulled; and
3) that the defendants Plamondon and General Motors be
condemned jointly and severally to pay to him the sum of
$6,133.71 with interest and costs 3
At trial, General Motors argued that it could not be held liable
for the defects of which the plaintiff complained principally because
Kravitz had not entered into a contract of sale with General Motors,
and therefore that no buyer-seller relationship existed between the
two parties. Since the conclusions quoted above would require a
contract of sale between plaintiff and defendant, General Motors
* Of the Bar of Montreal.
1 [1979] 1 S.C.R. 790.
-2If Mr Kravitz’s Oldsmobile were in fact free of mechanical defects, this
would perhaps be of anecdotal interest only at this late date. (It happens to be
true, however; the said Oldsmobile itself bears witness to its suitability for
intended use in conveying its new owner about town.)
3 Supra, note 1, 794.
1980]
COMMENTS – COMMENTAIRES
argued that it could not be condemned for breach of a contract it
had not made – hardly a fantastic notion.
The Superior Court decided in favor of the plaintiff, Kravitz,
holding that it was of little importance whether the fault com-
mitted by the defendant was delictual or contractual, and that
furthermore, owing to the presumed knowledge of latent defects
which is imputed to dealers and manufacturers, the defendants
could not avoid legal warranties and liability for quasi-offences.
The judgment of the Superior Court was affirmed by the Quebec
Court of Appeal.
Nowhere in the proceedings or evidence is there any mention
of a contract between General Motors and Plamondon;
indeed,
from Kravitz’s standpoint, any allegation of the sort would have
been irrelevant. His contention was that the contract of sale in his
favour should be set aside because of Plamondon’s breach of the
warranty against latent defects owed by a vendor to a purchaser
by the terms of article 1522 C.C. Thus, the issue before the Supreme
Court concerned General Motors’ liability to Kravitz under the con-
tract between the latter and Plamondon. The vendor Plamondon
had not appealed the decision of the Court of Appeal and was
therefore not a party to the proceedings at its third and final level.
Mr Justice Pratte found “uncontradicted presumptions” that
the vehicle was purchased by Plamondon from General Motors and
that at the time of sale it suffered from the same “latent defects”
as existed at the time of the sale to Kravitz 4 The record in fact
does not disclose who sold the vehicle to Plamondon, or even
whether it was acquired by sale.’
The Court thus found that the contract to be cancelled was that
presumed to exist between General Motors and Plamondon and not
the contract to which Kravitz, the plaintiff, was a party. The Courts
below, however, had set aside the contract between Kravitz and his
vendor. What do we have, then, to this point? A contract never proved
or referred to by either party is presumed to exist only to be
resiliated without any demand for cancellation having been made
in the pleadings, and this despite the fact that one of the parties
to this presumed contract, Plamondon, was not before the Court!
The notion that a successor by particular title enjoys all the
rights and remedies which his predecessor in title acquired for the
direct benefit of the thing is both radical (for Quebec law) and
4 Ibid., 796.
sSales of new vehicles between dealers are not uncommon.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 25
controversial. It will no doubt elicit much academic and judicial
comment. One may well question whether the Kravitz case, bringing
two litigants before the Supreme Court for a decision on specific
facts, in fact gave the Court the framework it needed for its
decision.
In order to assist in transforming the conclusions sought
by Kravitz into the type of action envisaged by the Court, Pratte
J. had recourse to article 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure. On the
basis of that article, he determined that the action was really one
for cancellation of the sale between General Motors and Plamon-
don.6
Interestingly, the form of relief requested by Kravitz appears
very similar, if not identical, to that sought by the plaintiff in the
well-known case of Gougeon v. Peugeot Canada Ltde,7 although
Deschenes J. (then of the Court of Appeal) appears in that case to
have effected a different transformation on the basis of article 2:
Le premier juge a trait6 l’action de l’appelante contre Peugeot comme s’il
s’agissait d’une action en annulation de ]a vente de l’automobile; mais ce
n’est pas lh du tout ce qu’allguait l’appelante. Non seulement ne con-
cluait-elle pas h l’annulation contre Peugeot, mais elle all6guait spdcifique-
ment le contrat de garantie et arguait en toutes lettres de son droit A un
recours contre le manufacturier. Ii s’est gliss6 lh une m6prise f~cheuse qui
a aiguil16 le jugement a quo sur la mauvaise voie.8
On the basis of similar proceedings, therefore, the Supreme Court in
Kravitz and the Court of Appeal in Gougeon came to diametrically
opposite conclusions with respect to the relief being sought.
The questions this raises about the process of civil litigation
surely require consideration. Should parties to proceedings continue
to make their decisions on the basis of the evidence, the proceedings
and the law applicable thereto, or is the process changing to include
new factors? In such a case, should these factors not be defined by
the legislature?
0 Supra, note 1, 820.
” [1973] C.A. 824.
8 Ibid., 825.
