A Quebec man who stood firm on a fishing boat worth nearly $70,000 after Tim Hortons mistakenly sent him an email saying he had won it has lost a fight to bring a class action against the coffee chain.
Quebec’s Court of Appeal overturned a lower-court ruling Friday that had allowed the lawsuit to proceed, finding the erroneous email could not entitle a customer to a prize he had never won.
In spring 2024, Jonathan Deschâtelets took part in Tim Hortons’ Roll Up to Win contest. Players were given until April 12 to reveal their rolls. Deschâtelets played 24 times through the company’s mobile app, winning three coffees, a three-month subscription to The Athletic and two prizes of 160 Tims reward points.
Then on April 17, five days after the deadline to reveal rolls, he received another email, part of a prize summary sent to nearly 500,000 customers across Canada, that said he had also won a Tracker Targa boat package — a 200-horsepower Mercury motor and a trailer. The boat is worth about $68,751.
As Deschâtelets tried to contact Tim Hortons, seeking confirmation, the company sent out another email warning the prize summary may have contained errors. Customers should disregard any incorrect information, it advised.
But Deschâtelets sought the boat, or at least its value if it could not be delivered. He also then sought compensation for stress and disappointment, and punitive damages of about $10,000 for each member of a proposed class action covering affected Quebec customers.
The Court of Appeal dismissed his case Friday, disagreeing with an initial ruling from Quebec’s Superior Court in June 2025.
Under Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act, it said, a merchant is bound by statements made before or when a contract is formed, not by ones made afterward. So because the email arrived after the contest was over, Tim Hortons, the court found, had met its contractual obligations by letting him play and it could not entitle Deschâtelets to the boat.
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