Judge rules on alleged racist Sears tractor riding ban

Photo re-enactment (not the actual people involved)

  Veteran judge Michelle Pauze recently presided over a contentious case of alleged racism at a Sears outlet at the Galeries Joliette.
   Two Muslim Algerian immigrants, Ratiba Boudebouz and Hamida Khammar sued Sears at the Human Rights Tribunal for $40,000 and $35,000 respectively after being tossed from the store by security guards on June 13, 2010.
  Boudebouz, who moved to Canada in 2006, was wearing a Muslim veil, but Khammar was not.
  Khammar was pregnant and had some health issues, which led the two to take a rest, sitting on a furniture display at the store while their sons, 6 and 2, climbed onto tractors nearby.

   A store attendant asked them to get their kids off the tractors. Boudebouz noted that she didn't understand why the kids couldn't do what they were doing and noted that there was no sign forbidding it.
   According to store employees, Boudebouz asked if she was being targeted because they were Muslim.
  Boudebouz said that the employees told her to return to her country if she didn't like the rules. They denied ever saying such a thing.
  The argument escalated and a security guard escorted the two mothers and their two sons out.
   Boudebouz returned and demanded the names of the employees.
   She called her husband (a pediatrician at the local hospital), called 911, called a store manager and later filed a complaint with the help of CRARR at the Tribunal.
   The story made headlines in various news outlets when the two filed a suit against Sears in 2013.
   The court noted a few inconsistencies with the complaint, noting that Boudebouz wrote at one time that the employee told three of them to go back to their country but elsewhere she reported that he said it separately.
   The judge also noted that Boudebouz used terms such as  “savage act of aggression” and “barbaric attack” that they were “pushed violently” “several times,”  in her complaint but the video imagery didn't support those descriptions, according to Pauze.
   One employee, who is gay, seemed to think that Boudebouz might have made a limp-wrist gesture, mocking his homosexuality.
   The employees admitted that they weren't very polite and might have spoken disrespectfully, frankness which the judge appreciated.
    After hearing the case through four days last December and another day in January, issued a judgment on May 26 dismissing the case.
   (In an unrelated recent decision that might interest consumers, a judge awarded around $1,600 to a consumer who bought an $800 air conditioner from Sears, who invoked an anti-lemon clause after the machine required more than three repairs).