A Montreal-area police officer acted unlawfully when he handcuffed, searched and issued a $100 ticket to a woman for failing to hold a subway escalator handrail, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

“A reasonable police officer in the same circumstances would not have considered failure to hold the handrail to be an offence,” the court wrote in a unanimous decision released Friday morning. “The police officer therefore committed a fault when he arrested” Bela Kosoian.

The ruling puts an end to an extraordinary decade-long legal ordeal for Kosoian.

“First, I was shocked,” Kosoian said in an interview about hearing the ruling. “Then I was screaming with happiness.

“I am happy for all Canadians,” she added. “I was principled and I knew something was wrong. I’m happy that all Canadians now can breathe freely.”

The unanimous decision, written by Supreme Court Justice Suzanne Côté, awarded Kosoian $20,000 in damages. The Montreal transit authority, the STM, is responsible for half of the damages and the police officer who arrested and ticketed Kosoian — Fabio Camacho — for the other half.

Côté said Kosoian had suffered “an unlawful arrest” in 2009 that violated the norms of a democratic society.

“In a free and democratic society, no one should accept — or expect to be subjected to — unjustified state intrusions. Interference with freedom of movement, just like invasion of privacy, must not be trivialized.”

The unanimous decision overturns lower-court rulings that had blamed Kosoian as “the author of her own misery.”

While the incident involved a banal event — failure to hold an escalator handrail — the ruling has wider implications because it sets limits on the powers of police.

“In a free and democratic society, police officers may interfere with the exercise of individual freedoms only to the extent provided for by law,” Côté wrote.

“If the offence that the police officer believes has been committed simply does not exist,” officers do not have the power “to require a person to identify himself or herself and to arrest the person if he or she refuses to comply,” the court ruled.

The pictogram that caused the incident is widely used on escalators, and can also be seen in Toronto’s subways. It simply cautions people to hold the handrail, the court noted. The Montreal transit authority was wrong to train police officers to consider the pictogram as obliging people to do so, it added.

“A subway user does not “disobey” a pictogram unless it creates an obligation or prohibition,” Coté wrote.

“It follows that a pictogram that only warns, advises or informs cannot serve as the basis for this offence. After all, one does not “disobey” a warning. At most, one refuses to take notice of it. This interpretation — which flows from the ordinary meaning of the words — is the one that must be adopted by a reasonable police officer called upon to enforce” the transit authority’s pictogram by-law.

The fact that Camacho acted as he was trained to do doesn’t absolve him of wrongdoing.

In democratic societies, police officers can’t assume that “blindly” following the orders or training they received clears them of civil liability, the court said. Officers are obliged to have adequate knowledge of criminal and penal law, and of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it added.

“Police officers cannot avoid personal civil liability simply by arguing that they were merely carrying out an order that they knew or ought to have known was unlawful,” Côté wrote.

Eugene Meehan, former executive legal officer at the Supreme Court of Canada, said in an email to the Star that the decision “impacts every single Canadian.” A lawyer with Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa, Meehan said it affirms that police must have a legal basis for their actions and “are not automatically exempt from civil liability.”

Kosoian, who moved to London, Ont., after the incident, had sued the police officer and the Montreal transit commission for a total of $69,000. She said the incident caused her physical and psychological distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

The court ruled that Kosoian had the right to refuse to hold the handrail, and refuse to produce identification, because the officer’s order was based “on an offence that simply does not exist in law.”

“Constable Camacho committed a civil fault by ordering Ms. Kosoian to identify herself and by arresting her and conducting a search based on a non‑existent offence, namely disobeying the pictogram indicating that the handrail should be held,” the court ruled.

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“A reasonable police officer looking at the STM’s sign would have concluded that the pictogram simply advises users to be careful and does not impose an obligation,” it added. “Before depriving Ms. Kosoian of her liberty, Constable Camacho had to ensure that there was valid legal justification for his actions.”

Kosoian, 48, grew up in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, before moving to Quebec with her family in the early 2000s. A chess player who earned the internationally ranked title of “candidate master,” she worked for years organizing tournaments as the “women’s co-ordinator” for the Canadian Chess Federation.

The incident occurred at 5:05 p.m. on May 13, 2009, as Kosoian rode the subway escalator on her way to her history class at a university in downtown Montreal.

At the front of the escalator, as well as at a spot halfway down, were yellow pictograms that said, “Caution … hold handrail.” Kosoian rummaged through her bag searching for subway fare.

Camacho, a City of Laval police officer, ordered her to hold the handrail. She refused. At the bottom of the escalator, Kosoian was forced into a holding room by Camacho and another police officer.

She was handcuffed after refusing to provide identification. The officers searched her bag, found her identification and issued two tickets: $100 for not holding the handrail, and $320 for hindering the work of police officers.

At municipal court, Kosoian was acquitted of the tickets. Kosoian then sued Camacho, the City of Laval and the Montreal transit commission.

The Quebec Court dismissed her lawsuit, ruling that Kosoian “illegally and obstinately refused to comply” with Camacho’s order to hold the handrail. The Quebec Court of Appeal, in a split decision, also dismissed her lawsuit.

Two of the three appeal judges ruled that Kosoian was “the author of her own misery” because she refused to co-operate with police officers “who were doing their job.”

But the dissenting judge argued Kosoian’s detention was illegal because the pictogram does not oblige people to hold the handrail but simply recommends that they do.

The Supreme Court surprised some legal scholars when it agreed to hear Kosoian’s appeal.

After the ruling, Kosoian held a news conference at the Montreal offices of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations. She noted she is studying to take the bar exam and hopes to become a practising lawyer in Ontario.

“This fight was against abuse of power,” she said, according to The Canadian Press.

“I did not break any law. I’m going to be a lawyer. I am a mother of children. It was an unlawful order. I have principles and I fought and I fought because it’s going to serve all Canadians and Quebecers.”