Exclusion of the legal warranty of quality: impacts on the subsequent buyers of an immovable

This post, published on Éditions Yvon Blais’ blog on latent defects on August 2, 2018 (FR), discusses the judgment in Compagnie d’assurances ING du Canada v. Gervais  (Full Text | Fiche Quantum), in which the Court of Quebec reiterated the rule that a subsequent buyer has a direct recourse against a previous seller of an immovable.

However, this decision reminds us that a subsequent acquirer will have the burden of proving that all the necessary conditions for the legal warranty of quality to apply (namely that the defect (i) existed at the time of the sale, and (ii) was unknown to the buyer, (iii) serious, and (iv) latent) were met upon all of the sales of the immovable in question, from the sale to said subsequent acquirer to the sale to the previous seller in question.

Therefore, a sale with an exclusion of warranty will preclude a subsequent buyer from suing any previous sellers who sold the property before it was sold with an exclusion of warranty, even if said previous sellers sold it with the legal warranty.