Case information

Private international law — Choice of forum — Jurisdiction of Quebec court — Forum selection clause — Applicant applying for provisional injunction in order to have Facebook remove restrictions imposed on his accounts in response to post found to be contrary to Facebook community standards — Respondent, Facebook’s parent company, raising declinatory exception based on forum selection clause conferring jurisdiction on California court — Quebec Superior Court accepting declinatory exception and dismissing action, holding that dispute was contractual in nature and was subject to respondent’s commercial terms, including forum selection clause in favour of California courts — Quebec Court of Appeal dismissing appeal — Whether forum selection clause is valid and applicable if it prevents Quebec litigant from asserting, before local court, fundamental rights guaranteed to litigant by Quebec Charter — Charter of human rights and freedoms, CQLR, c. C 12.

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Mr. Gagnon, the author of several books, applied for a provisional injunction in order to have Facebook remove the restrictions imposed on his accounts in response to a post that was found to be contrary to Facebook standards. The superior court dismissed the action for an injunction and damages because it was of the view that the dispute was contractual in nature and was subject to Meta’s commercial terms, including the forum selection clause in favour of the courts of California. The court of appeal dismissed the appeal because Mr. Gagnon had not shown that the trial judge had made a reviewable error in finding that the contract was commercial in nature and in applying the forum selection clause set out therein.