Court of Appeal rejects CSL bid to dismiss Meadowbrook case
By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban
Quebec Court of Appeal Judge Benoît Moore has upheld a December 2023 Quebec Superior Court decision to reject the City of Côte St. Luc’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit against them by the owners of the Meadowbrook Golf Course. CSL will, instead, have to argue the case on the merits.
Meadowbrook Groupe Pacifique and the site’s previous owner have wanted to develop the golf course, which is located in Côte St. Luc and the City of Montreal borough of Lachine, for housing for decades. Legal actions have been taken by Meadowbrook contesting Montreal’s refusal to enable the course to be developed. Legal action was also taken in 2002, against CSL’s rezoning in 2000 of its part of the land from residential to recreational, which Meadowbrook’s owner calls a “disguised expropriation.”
In 2022, as reported by The Suburban, Quebec Superior Court Judge Babak Barin rejected two June 2021 bids by Montreal and Côte St. Luc to dismiss then-new legal action against them by Meadowbrook Groupe Pacific. There were previous amendments to the original case by MGP.
Last November, Councillor Dida Berku introduced a resolution at council calling on the firm of Belanger Sauvé to file a motion to dismiss the case. She told The Suburban that “our attorney uncovered [a technical irregularity], that they declare one owner to be the owner of the Lachine side, and another owner to be the owner of the Côte St. Luc side.”
Berku provided an update at the Feb. 12 council meeting, saying the longstanding case is continuing.
“There’s no end to it,” she added. “It’s another motion in the saga of who is the real owner of the golf course. We will soon find out the result of that.”
Two days later, the Court of Appeal made its decision to uphold the Superior Court’s rejection of CSL’s motion to dismiss the golf course owner’s case.
Asked about the latest decision, Berku explained to The Suburban Feb. 22 that there is one plaintiff in the CSL case, and another in the case against Montreal.
The owner “says it’s the same company and our lawyer’s position was that you can’t have the owner on title suing in one case and then the owner who’s not on title, but who has a counter-letter, suing in the other case.
“Basically, the court said it’s a legal issue that can be debated at trial. So we will do that.” n
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