{"id":875713,"date":"2026-08-29T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/875713\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T11:00:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T11:00:31","slug":"air-canada-settles-with-brinks-over-pearson-gold-heist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/875713\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Canada settles with Brink’s over Pearson gold heist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Air Canada and Brink’s have settled their lawsuit over who should pay for the more than $20 million stolen in a Pearson Airport heist. Jon Woodward reports. <\/p>\n

Air Canada may have to pay more than the $18,000<\/a> it was found liable for in connection with the $20 million in gold and cash that was stolen from its cargo facilities at Toronto Pearson airport<\/a> three years ago.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s largest airline confirmed it settled a dispute in the federal court of appeal with Brink\u2019s, the company that commissioned the shipment of some 400 kilograms of gold<\/a> and 53 kilograms of bank notes from Switzerland to Toronto in April 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can confirm the appeal has been discontinued. We are pleased the matter has been resolved,\u201d Air Canada\u2019s director of media relations, Sean Davidson, said to CTV News in a statement this week.<\/p>\n

Neither company would confirm the amount of the settlement, which brings to an end one court fight over the theft, while several criminal cases continue to proceed in a Brampton, Ont., courthouse, including that of two former Air Canada employees<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a court filing, Brink\u2019s said it paid millions back to its Swiss clients, Raiffeisen Schweiz, a retail bank, and Valcambi SA, a precious metals refining company, and blamed Air Canada for lax security measures.<\/p>\n

The court case took a surprising turn when a federal court judge found Air Canada was liable for around 1\/1000th of the value of the goods it was transporting.<\/p>\n

The court found that Brinks didn\u2019t declare a value on the shipment, so an international treaty limited Air Canada\u2019s liability to about $40 a kilogram, the same rate as if an average passenger lost an average suitcase.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand that most viewers might be surprised to learn about this, but Brink\u2019s should not have been surprised to learn about this,\u201d said trade lawyer Gavin Magrath of Magrath\u2019s International Legal Counsel.<\/p>\n

Magrath said if a customer doesn\u2019t declare the value of a shipment, a default amount specified by the Montreal Convention applies. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe carrier does not know what they are carrying, and you can\u2019t ask a trucker or a plane or a steamship to have unlimited liability. They would only discover that your cargo was worth $20 million when there was an accident,\u201d Magrath said.<\/p>\n

Brink\u2019s appealed the judgement last year, saying they declared the value in other ways by using the \u201cAC Secure\u201d service, using words like \u201cvaluable,\u201d \u201cspecial supervision,\u201d and the word \u201cGold\u201d repeated at least 13 times.<\/p>\n

In the appeal, Brink\u2019s proposed to publicly disclose Air Canada\u2019s confidential security process and \u201chighly commercially sensitive\u201d confidential rates, their notice of appeal says.<\/p>\n

Then the case went silent, with no word from Brink\u2019s on why. Air Canada confirmed the settlement to CTV News this week.<\/p>\n

Magrath said even though the treaty is clear, a settlement may have been a smart move.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if there\u2019s only a five per cent chance that we lose, now we\u2019re on the hook for $20 million. A reasonable party looking at that economic situation would have a strong incentive to pay a significant sum of money to avoid that risk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Related Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Air Canada and Brink’s have settled their lawsuit over who should pay for the more than $20 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[712,43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-875713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-apple-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}