Court rejects L'Île-des-Sœurs resident’s case

Judge Claude Auclair condemned Carole Godin to pay the rent which she has refused to pay since August 2004 and threw out her case for damages. At a monthly rent of $1,359 per month, the unpaid rent would come to $54,000 at present.

Readers of the Magazine will recall this story in several articles published in this paper. A few years ago, occupants of certain buildings in the island complained about the presence of ants in their apartments. These ant colonies can host as many as 300,000 workers and several queens.

Recognising the complexity of the problem, Les Structures Métropolitaines Inc, the owners of the buildings in question, said that they believed they had found an adequate solution to the problem. To obtain permanent results, exterminators had to make several visits to the infested apartments with the co-operation of the tenants.

In one of her articles, Toula Foscolos reported that a spokesperson from the Borough pointed out that the persons who filed complaints seemed satisfied with the results because the ants had not returned. It is known that when corrective measures are not taken by building owners, Verdun Borough can do the needed work and can request that the invoice be paid. That wasn’t necessary in this case since the owners respected the Borough’s request.

Madame Godin stopped paying the rent on her François Stret apartment during the autumn of 2004 and also refused to let the exterminators enter her unit. In March 2006, the court forced her to allow an exterminator into her apartment who later confirmed that there were no longer any ants in the plaintiff’s apartment.

The court decided that the plaintiff “dragged the defendant in legal proceedings endlessly [...] owing to her whims and her tendency to exaggerate.”