Prior to being elected, the current mayor of Portage-du-Fort Kevin Murphy was ordered to pay the municipality $62,893 plus interest and costs after he improperly terminated his garbage collection and snow removal contracts with the municipality in 2022. The final amount Murphy was ordered to pay in damages was only a portion of the total ($91,194.22) sought by the municipality for the added expense the replacement contracts, as the judge found the municipality could have better mitigated its damages when it came to the snow removal contract.
The decision was given by judge Horia Bundaru in the Quebec Superior Court on Jan. 28, 2025. Murphy was elected mayor of the municipality in November that year, beating four-term incumbent Lynne Cameron by 10 votes, 98 to 88 (the municipality has 238 registered voters). THE EQUITY only learned of this court case following the election.
Murphy declined to speak about the case to THE EQUITY.
The dispute
The case dates back to the spring and summer of 2022, when Murphy had the contracts for both the village’s garbage collection and snow removal. The contracts were awarded in 2021 for a three-year term. The garbage collection was $15,000 plus tax per year, and snow removal was $27,500 plus tax per year.
According to the court documents, Murphy had a dispute over late payment of a $1,437.18 invoice for garbage collection that he had submitted on Apr. 14, 2022. He sent the municipality’s director general Lisa Dagenais a message on Apr. 29 noting that he had not yet been paid. The documents say she apologized on May 1, stated she had been sick and out of the office and said the cheque would be ready in a few days. Murphy cashed the cheque on May 6.
The documents state that Murphy then sent an email to Dagenais on June 2, 2022, cancelling both the garbage collection and snow removal contracts:
“Lisa I just wanted to let you know that I’m not interested in working for the municipality anymore so you should send out tenders for the garbage and snow removal. I’m not interested in working with a municipality that doesn’t trust me and wants to sneak behind my back and call people asking questions about me. The municipality broke the garbage contract in April for none payment [sic] in the month of April so for this I’m ending the contract. I’ll be nice and do the garbage this Saturday morning but that will be the last time you will need to find someone to do it from then on. I will not charge the municipality for the full contract if they let me out of the snow removal contract which was broken last year as well for none monthly payment [sic]. I just want to go our separate way with no problems.”
Murphy did collect the garbage that Saturday (June 4), and on June 8 Dagenais warned him in an email that she had spoken with the municipal lawyer and thought he should be aware of possible monetary consequences for breaking the contract.
Murphy responded in an email that day arguing it was the municipality that had broken the contract due to late payment, but noted “that’s fine, I’ll keep doing the garbage contract.”
Dagenais responded back, mistakenly stating that Murphy had been paid in April, and also informing him that the municipality had deducted $142.05 from his invoice. The deduction was for a tarp that she claimed that Murphy’s father had damaged with his truck while snowplowing at some unspecified point during the previous winter. Dagenais later testified that she and then-mayor Lynne Cameron had decided to deduct the amount without advising him beforehand. Dagenais said that she had left a voicemail with Murphy after the citizen had given her an invoice for the tarp. Murphy denied responsibility for the incident and demanded the money be reimbursed, but stated that he would “keep doing my contracts.”
Dagenais wrote to Murphy asking for his bank coordinates for direct deposits, saying that it would “stop any confusion” regarding the date he received payments.
“During her testimony, in re-direct, Dagenais testified that she asked Murphy for his bank coordinates prospectively, in the event that he was awarded new contracts in the future. The Court does not find this portion of her testimony credible,” the court documents note. “However, in the Court’s opinion, this is not sufficient to affect the credibility of her entire testimony.”
On June 10, Murphy replied that there was no confusion on his part, only Dagenais’, stating, “Before we go any farther I want my money back that you took for the tarp without my authorization.”
Dagenais refused to reimburse the $142.05, and Murphy wrote in an email later that day:
“So then you leave me no choice but to end the garbage contract for breach of contract for the month of April for none payment and steeling [sic] from me. [ . . . ] I will not be doing the garbage tomorrow or in the future you will need to find an alternative. I tried to do this the easy way but you insist on fighting me. I also spoke to my lawyer and we will be filing against the municipality.”
Murphy did not collect the garbage the following day.
New tender calls issued, snow removal more than twice as expensive
The court documents note that Murphy’s decision left the municipality scrambling to find a short-notice replacement. Cameron testified that the council was “in panic mode” with garbage sitting out in the June heat and citizens complaining it hadn’t been picked up.
Dagenais, who had previously worked for the nearby municipality of l’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, contacted that municipality’s garbage collector Mario Tremblay to see if he could do the work.
On Wednesday, June 15, Tremblay collected the garbage that had been sitting out since Saturday. The following day, the court documents state, the municipality sent a letter to Murphy advising him that he was in breach of contract and the municipality would be seeking to recover damages.
Tremblay continued to collect the garbage weekly on an “ad hoc basis” between June 18 and Aug. 6, the documents state.
According to Dagenais’ testimony, sometime in early July, the municipal council decided in an in-camera session to issue calls for tenders for the remaining two years on both the garbage and snow removal contract.
The call for tenders for the garbage contract was published in mid-July, and Tremblay was the only bidder.
On Aug. 2, Murphy, who the documents state had not had any communication with the municipality since June, wrote to the municipality to say he was interested in continuing the garbage collection contract, under the conditions that he be reimbursed for the amount taken from his invoice, and that the municipality assume the cost of hiring Tremblay. No mention of the snow removal contract was made.
The following day, the judge’s decision notes, the municipality awarded the garbage collection contract to Tremblay. Dagenais told Murphy on Aug. 4 that Tremblay had been awarded the contract and that the municipality would be going out to tender for the snow removal contract for the remaining two years. The documents state that Murphy did not respond except to ask for a signed letter.
On Sept. 21, 2022, the municipality issued a call for tenders for snow removal, and awarded the contract on Oct. 5 to the only bidder, Rhéo Mallette, for $68,000 (plus tax), which is more than double what Murphy had been charging ($27,500).
Cameron later told THE EQUITY that she had considered bringing the issue up during the election, but didn’t want to be seen to be slandering someone’s reputation.
“It was very difficult, there’s some difficult choices and decisions and the mayor always gets the full blame,” she said.
Judge’s decision
Murphy was found liable for some but not all of the $91,194.22 in damages claimed by the municipality.
The judge found that Murphy had repudiated both his contracts without sufficient cause, and found his behaviour “incompatible with his contention that he changed his mind after his June 2 email”, pointing to his actions as well as followup emails with Dagenais.
The judge notes that Murphy “as the provider of services, was only entitled to repudiate them ‘for a serious reason’ (and even then, not at an inopportune moment).”
The judge said the dispute over $142 was a “far from sufficient” reason to cancel the contracts, and the late payment of the April invoice did not constitute “substantial nonperformance” on the part of the municipality.
“It is understandable that Murphy was aggravated by the fact that the Municipality had unilaterally decided to deduct money from his invoice without even having the courtesy to put him on notice beforehand,” the documents state. “However, this issue, which, as admitted by Murphy during his cross-examination at trial, pertains to a small amount when compared to the value of either of the contracts, is insufficient to constitute a ‘serious reason’ or a substantial nonperformance.”
“The reasons invoked in his June 2 email appear to be mere pretenses to get out of the contracts ‘with no problems,’” the documents note later.
The judge found that the difference between what Murphy had charged and the new garbage collection contract was $9,893.08, a loss that Murphy was liable for.
However, the judge deemed that the municipality had failed to mitigate its damages in relation to the snow removal contract, accepting a bid more than double what Murphy had charged.
Mallette had charged $68,000/year for the remaining two years of the contract for a total of $136,000 (pre-tax), significantly more than the $55,000 Murphy would have charged for the remaining two years. The documents note that the contractor lowered his rates when applying for a new contract in 2024.
“Dagenais testified that she was surprised to see how high Mallette’s bid was in comparison with Murphy’s contract. As a matter of fact, the Court notes that Mallette lowered his price when he bid in June 2024 for a new snow removal contract for the period 2024-2027 to $54,000 (plus tax) per year,” the documents state. “At trial, he testified that he did so because he realized that the price of $68,000 which he had charged the Municipality since 2022 was ‘too high.’”
The decision notes that the municipality did not have to accept the bid, and could have re-issued the tender or changed the length of the contract to one year.
“The Court finds that by waiting until September 21, 2022 to issue the call for tenders the Municipality did not act reasonably and diligently as it self-limited its ability to maneuver in the event that the bids proved to be too high. Nothing prevented the Municipality from issuing the call for tenders much earlier, as it had done with respect to the garbage connection contract.”
Cameron said she disagreed with the judge’s assessment, telling THE EQUITY that while council at the time thought the price was high, she said that the limited number of contractors in the area was something the judge hadn’t considered.
“There was the suggestion, maybe we should go back out, but had he been the only one and he gave a higher estimate, we’d have been under the gun,” she said. “The only thing I don’t think the judge understood is that in the Pontiac we’re limited. In the city you might have 15 or 20 [contractors available].”
“Perhaps we should have gone out [to tender] a little earlier, I really don’t think it would have made a difference,” she added.
The Court decided to reduce the damages the municipality had sought for the snow removal contract from $81,000 to $53,000, which is the difference between what Murphy charged ($27,500) and the lower amount that Mallette ended up charging the municipality ($54,000) over two years.
Judge Bundaru ordered Murphy to pay $62,893.08 plus interest at the legal rate and the additional indemnity since Mar. 31, 2024, which was supposed to be the end date of the contract with the municipality, as well as judicial costs.
