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Notre Cour s’est, en effet, déjà prononcée à deux reprises contre la transmissibilité du recours en dommages pour perte de vie ou abrégement de vie lorsque la victime décède immédiatement en raison de l’acte fautif ou y survit quelques heures sans, toutefois, reprendre conscience avant de mourir: le droit à la vie prenant fin avec la vie de la victime, ce recours n’est pas susceptible d’entrer dans le patrimoine de la victime et ne saurait donc être transmis à ses héritiers.
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56 Rather, the appellant is asking us to consider the death of any person to be a prejudice that is objectively compensable under Quebec civil law, or in other words, that is the basis for a right to compensation regardless of whether the deceased was aware of his or her death. Accordingly we are also asked to reconsider, in light of the Charter, the past judgments of this Court that bar such compensation. This Court has already held on two occasions that an action for damages for loss of life or shortening of life cannot be transmitted where the victim dies immediately as a result of the wrongful act or survives a few hours without regaining consciousness before dying: since the right to life is extinguished when the victim dies, this remedy cannot become part of the victim’s patrimony and, therefore, cannot be transmitted to his or her heirs. In Driver v. Coca‑Cola Ltd., supra, at pp. 204-5 and 207-8, the majority of the Court, per Taschereau J., explained the rule (upheld by unanimous judgment of this Court in Pantel v. Air Canada, supra, at pp. 478‑79) as follows:
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