Marie-Anne Legault, allegedly assaulted in a taxi, pleads case not be dismissed
A Quebec judge must decide whether a lawsuit filed by a Montreal woman, who says she was sexually assaulted by a taxi driver, should be thrown out of court.
Marie-Anne Legault is suing the City of Montreal and the Quebec Transport Commission for $250,000 in damages.
In her lawsuit, she claims that officials failed to ensure the city's taxi transportation service is safe.
Legault says she was sexually assaulted by a Montreal taxi driver during the early morning hours of Sept. 18, 2014.
She says she sat in the back seat, but the driver insisted that she sit up front and she eventually agreed.
That's when the driver started to touch her and kiss her on the neck, Legault alleges.
She was able to escape when she told the driver to stop at an ATM machine so that she could withdraw cash.
No charges have been laid against the taxi driver.
The Quebec Transport Commission is arguing that it is not responsible for what happened to Legault and that lawsuit be dropped.
But Legault's lawyer disagrees.
"We're saying that in this case — due to, for example, failure to do criminal background checks, failure to look into this matter, this problem in the city — the commission had an obligation, a duty to do something in response to this," said Leslie-Anne Wood, who spent over an hour in a Montreal courtroom Monday arguing that her client's lawsuit against both the city and the transport commission is valid.
Wood says it would be premature to dismiss the case against the commission because evidence has yet to be presented.
The judge is expected to render a decision sometime in May.
