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The Court of Quebec will rule Wednesday morning on what language rights activists said could be a historic case on Quebec’s sign law.

Judge Salvatore Mascia will render judgment on 24 businesses prosecuted between 1998 and 2001 for breaking Quebec’s French language charter, which requires that French be markedly predominant on signs. The case was heard in May, when charges against another 52 defendants were dropped.

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1. The lawyer

Lawyer Brent Tyler, a former president of Alliance Quebec and onetime Equality Party candidate, is best known for his many court challenges to Quebec’s language charter, including seven before the Supreme Court and one appeal to the United Nations. The Montreal Gazette has rebuked him on its editorial page for his “pugnacious nature and his hair-trigger temper” and other media have reproached his “litigious, slash-and-burn style.”

But one thing Tyler could not be accused of is lacking tenacity. His clients have ranged from children excluded from English school to “Bill the Plumber,” an N.D.G. tradesman fined for the English sign on his truck.