Cour Suprême Du Canada upholds ruling overturning Quebec man’s death declaration
OTTAWA — The cour suprême du canada has confirmed that a Quebec judge could cancel the death declaration of Hooshang Imanpoorsaid after new evidence suggested he may still be alive in Iran. The ruling, released Friday, keeps alive a legal dispute tied to an insurance policy, a disappearance, and a family that lost contact with him after February 2008. The court said the legal fiction of death must give way when proof of a person’s current existence emerges.
What the courts found
Hooshang Imanpoorsaid told his family in February 2008 that he was leaving for a business trip to Toronto, then sent an email the next day to two of his children saying that “things had deteriorated” and that radical measures were needed to fix them. He never returned to the family home in Brossard, in the Montreal area, and eight years later his wife, Deborah Carol Riddle, asked a court to declare him dead.
The insurer opposed that request, arguing that the circumstances of the disappearance suggested an attempt to avoid creditors because he was heavily indebted. Still, the court initially declared him dead seven years after he disappeared, in line with Quebec law. The issue later changed after the cour suprême du canada was asked to review the case.
Cour Suprême Du Canada and the new evidence
After hearing new evidence, Quebec Superior Court Judge Geeta Narang found it more likely than not that Imanpoorsaid was alive and that the death declaration had to be canceled. She pointed to what she called “reliable signs” that he had obtained a national identity card and passport in Iran, traveled within and outside that country, and enrolled for Iranian social benefits. She wrote in her 2021 decision that this was enough to set aside the death judgment and restore reality over a legal fiction.
In 2023, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld that decision, and Riddle took the case to the cour suprême du canada. The country’s top court ruled unanimously, 9-0, that the lower courts had not erred in applying the legal framework for proving the return of a person previously declared dead.
What the judges said
Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote for the court that a judgment declaring death lifts the “paralyzing veil of uncertainty” and allows life to continue. He added that such a judgment is a fiction and must always yield to proof of the current existence of the missing person. The court also noted that Quebec’s Civil Code sets out the consequences when a person who has been missing for years reappears.
The ruling leaves in place the finding that the declaration of death should be canceled if the evidence of continued existence is stronger than the legal presumption created by the earlier judgment. In this case, the cour suprême du canada said the evidence was enough to support that result.
What happens next
The decision closes one major chapter in a case that began with a disappearance in 2008 and moved through years of litigation over identity, insurance, and legal status. For now, the cour suprême du canada has made clear that a death declaration can be undone when new proof points to a living person, and that principle will now stand as the final word in this dispute.
