SASKATOON — Two Wakaw area farmers are taking Petro-Canada to court.
In a statement of claim filed in Court of Queen’s Bench in Prince Albert on Aug. 10, Gordon Harasymchuk and his father Maurice are asking for more than $80,000 in damages from the Calgary-based oil company.
Their claim seeks damages including $18,430 for overbilling by their local fuel dealer from 1989-91, $4,911 for payments made but not credited to their account, $10,000 for losses suffered as a result of lost credit rating and $50,000 in punitive damages. They also want Petro-Canada to pay all legal bills.
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Gordon Harasymchuk says he would have preferred to settle his dispute with the oil company privately but that proved impossible.
“There was no need to get lawyers involved in this, we should have been able to figure out an agreement,” he said in an interview. “But if it has to go (to court), it has to go.”
A Petro-Canada spokesperson had not seen the statement of claim last week, but said the company feels it has done everything it can to settle the dispute amicably.
“He (Harasymchuk) has the view that some harm has been caused by us,” said Rocco Ciancio, the oil company’s manager of public affairs for Western Canada. “Our view is we’ve settled the matter as far as the account is concerned.”
Ciancio said it would be “irresponsible to shareholders” to agree to the financial compensation being sought by the Harasymchuks. He added Petro-Canada has filed a statement of claim seeking damages from the former Wakaw dealer.
Wrong place, wrong time
Alan Logue, a Prince Albert lawyer acting for Harasymchuk, believes the Wakaw-area farmer has a good case: “He’s certainly not just a disgruntled, broke farmer who’s mad at the world. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was taken advantage of.”
The sequence of events leading up to the lawsuit began in the spring of 1992, Harasymchuk said.
He was told by his local Petro-Canada fuel dealer that all future sales would be C.O.D. until his account was paid in full. Assuming he owed $2,000 or $3,000, he was astonished to be told his debt was $14,000.
Harasymchuk said the bill made no sense, but his account was turned over to a collection agency, which he said harassed him with what he described as abusive phone calls.
In December 1992, Petro-Canada fired the Wakaw agent George Hrapchak. Last month the oil company sued Hrapchak Farm Products Ltd. for $221,608.
Petro-Canada eventually wiped the $14,000 off Harasymchuk’s account and sent him a rebate for $3,600, based on photocopies of cancelled cheques that were never credited to his account. But it has refused to make any other payments because there is no concrete evidence of other financial losses.
Harasymchuk admits he doesn’t have paper evidence because he didn’t keep the receipts: “I’ll take part of the blame there. I should have been more careful.”
But even without the paper trail, he said some simple calculations make it clear he was overcharged.
From 1989 to 1990, the average farm fuel bill in the province was $6.96 an acre yet his bills averaged $15.84 an acre, he said, even though his fuel consumption was only slightly over the provincial average.
After he stopped dealing with Petro-Canada in May 1992 his fuel bill dropped to $10.75 an acre in 1992 and $9.57 in 1993.
The statement of claim says the only possible explanation is that the Harasymchuks “were charged for product that was never in fact delivered to them by (Petro-Canada’s) agent.”
Logue said he expects a key issue in the case will centre on the fact that Petro-Canada contracted out their service to an independent dealer.
“If there was failure to credit or overcharging or non-delivery, (Petro-Canada) will say it’s not their fault and not their legal responsibility,” he said. The Harasymchuks will argue that the company allowed the dealer to use its name and products, and “can’t just wash their hands of it if things go wrong.”
Ciancio said Petro-Canada has done everything it should have done in the case. As soon as it found there was a problem in the Wakaw dealership, it ceased efforts to collect money from Harasymchuk. But claims about damage to reputation or financial viability are another matter, he said.
No supporting evidence
“Any conversation I’ve had with Gordon, it revolved more around the idea that his financial reputation, his ability to conduct his business, was in some way affected by this,” Ciancio said. “Our response to that is we have no evidence to indicate that.”
The statement of claim seeks $50,000 in punitive damages on the basis that the company acted in a “high handed and arrogant manner” in dealing with the Harasymchuks’ complaint.
The next step in the legal process is for Petro-Canada to file a statement of defence within 30 days.
