Accuses Rogers of “gross negligence”
MONTREAL – A class action lawsuit has been filed against Rogers Communications over the nationwide outage that began last Friday and “false representations”, particularly the company’s claim to be Canadas “most reliable” network.
The lawsuit was filed by LPC Avocat Inc. on behalf of Arnaud Verdier in the Quebec Superior Court. The class action has not yet been authorized by a judge.
An application for authorization specifies the lawsuit will include a class made up of Rogers, Fido, and Chatr customers who did not receive service on July 8 and/or July 9, 2022, and a subclass of people in Quebec on those dates who were unable to operate their device or make transactions because of the outage.
Verdier believes a credit for two days of service, which was offered as compensation for customers by Rogers, is “wholly inadequate” as he claims the damages he suffered “far exceeds” it.
Verdier further claims he was misled by advertising declaring Rogers to be the country’s “most reliable” network in 2020 when he switched from Bell and wants Rogers to be held accountable for its “negligence” and “insouciance”.
The application claims as of July 8, “Rogers’ management instructed its stores to remove all advertising containing the “Get on Canada’s Most Reliable 5G Network” reference from its stores,” and includes what Verdier says are communications from Rogers to its stores on July 8, telling them to take down the signs.
The application further argues the outage was preventable and attributed it to “gross negligence” by Rogers.
“Rogers should have tested its update prior to launching in what is known in IT as “staging”. It also appears that Rogers performed its update without a “rollback”,” the application says.
Verdier is claiming $200 in damages and punitive damages, arguing the latter are appropriate “especially when comparing Rogers’ conduct with that of Bell and Telus who never experienced such an outage, presumably because their technicians use industry standards and norms prior to performing maintenance updates,” the application reads. An additional $200 is also being claimed for damages related to Rogers’ claims of being the country’s most reliable network.
Rogers did not respond to a request for comment.
