Samir Fattal, aka Sam Fattal, was recently judged a vexatious litigant, seriously compromising his longstanding battle against the City of Westmount, which he feels has made his job as a landlord difficult.
As a result of the April decision, Fattal has been banned from launching any new legal action against the city or its employees.
The bad blood started around 15 years back when Fattal transformed an industrial building on St. Antoine in Westmount to residential, without the proper permits.
Westmount then shut the building down for code violations and Fattal started sending the city mail accusing Westmount administrators of anti-Semitism, complete with concentration camp and Gestapo references.
He jammed up their fax machine, stalked staffers at their homes and put up denunciatory posters and flags at his building and home on Edgehill in Upper Westmount.
According to the court document, "On a number of occasions, Mr. Fattal faxed gruesome photos of himself, bare-chested and gagging. One photo showed a tortured Mr. Fattal, with bulging eyes, and an iron bar across his mouth." And: "A further incident in the autumn of 1998 alarmed Westmount’s building inspectors. One day, Westmount’s employee, Mr. Michel Poulin, was performing an electrical inspection at the Saint Antoine building. Mr. Fattal suddenly appeared behind Mr. Poulin wearing a Saddam Hussein mask and brandishing a baseball bat. Mr. Poulin was frightened, but Mr. Fattal later called it a joke."
He even launched a series of small claims court suits for $7,000 each - all quickly rejected - against various inspectors, which seems pretty clever but ultimately jams up the system for legitimate litigants, who currently have to wait about two years to get before a judge.