MONTREAL — A Montreal-area school board says it’s no longer being targeted by a lawsuit that had alleged student artwork was being sold online by a teacher without their knowledge.
Ten Montreal-area parents filed a lawsuit in March 2024 against the board and one of its teachers because they thought their children’s artwork for class was being displayed for sale online.
In a statement Wednesday, Lester B. Pearson School Board says it investigated the allegations and concluded that the teacher — identified in court documents as Mario Perron — had committed an error in good faith, adding that it imposed a disciplinary sanction against him.
The board says the teacher uploaded images of the students’ artwork to a website for an educational activity on photo editing techniques, and that the drawings were never meant for sale.
It says the teacher failed to notice that a marketing template on the website he used had been activated, inadvertently adding price tags to the students’ work.
The Lester B. Pearson board says the website confirmed that none of the drawings were sold and that Perron did not receive any money.
The statement says the parents, which had been seeking $155,000 each plus punitive damages and an apology from Westwood Junior High School, have dropped the lawsuit.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 3, 2025.
The Canadian Press
