Tim Hortons told 500,000 players they won a boat; appeal court denied the class action

On April 17, 2024, after that year's Roll Up To Win rolling period had ended, Tim Hortons emailed about 500,000 mobile-app participants — addressed by name — saying they had won a Tracker Targa 18 WT 2024 boat and trailer worth roughly CAD $64,000–$68,751 with taxes. The eventual lead plaintiff, Jonathan Deschâtelets, had revealed only three coffees, a three-month magazine subscription and 160 points; he never revealed a boat win. The company sent a correction the same day telling customers to disregard the message, apologized, and attributed the error to human error.

LPC Avocats filed a proposed class action two days later under Quebec's Consumer Protection Act, arguing the email's general impression (per the Supreme Court of Canada's Richard v. Time test) made it a prohibited practice that bound the merchant: deliver the boats or their value, plus damages and $10,000 in punitive damages per class member. On June 27, 2025, Superior Court Justice Donald Bisson authorized the suit, limited to Quebec consumers because the claims relied on provincial law.

On October 9, 2026, the Quebec Court of Appeal granted Tim Hortons' appeal, set the authorization aside and denied the class action. The court found the plaintiff never won the boat in the contest and that an email sent after the contest ended was not a contractual or pre-contractual statement that could bind Tim Hortons under the Act; the plaintiff failed to show even the mere possibility of succeeding, the threshold for authorization. No boats were delivered and no compensation was ever ordered.

No compensation awarded; the two-year proposed class action (boats or value plus $10,000 punitive per member) was denied at authorization

A post-contest congratulation batch was sent from prize data that matched no one's actual results — roughly 500,000 false win notices in one send.

The error was corrected the same day, but an apology does not retract a representation; plaintiffs used the email itself as the basis of the claim.

Quebec's general-impression doctrine binds merchants to what their statements convey to consumers, so a marketing slip became a proposed class action within 48 hours.

The dispute still ran two years and reached the Court of Appeal before the company was clearly off the hook, because the authorization stage had been passed.

A win notification is a claim your contest data must back. When prize notices and actual results disagree at scale, retract fast — and expect plaintiffs to test the promise in court.

The Court of Appeal's October 9, 2026 decision ended the proposed case at the authorization stage: no boats, no damages, no settlement, and no claim form for recipients. Plaintiff's counsel LPC Avocats was reported to be reviewing the decision, and no appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada had been reported. The ruling leaves a marker for contest operators: an erroneous prize notice sent after a contest ends is not automatically a binding statement under Quebec's Consumer Protection Act, though the court stressed its conclusion turned on these facts.