A Quebec City court has ruled that a man broke Quebec's bylaw on peace and good order when he called a police officer a "douchebag" the night of Saint-Jean-Baptiste festivities last summer.

The full phrase in question was "Esti de gros douchebag de techniques-po."

Judge Patrice Simard wrote in his decision that, in Quebec, the term refers to a muscled, young, self-absorbed man who frequents tanning salons, has many tattoos and wears "bling-bling" and tight t-shirts.

The defendant, Philip Blaney, was leaving a bar on Grande Allée after 1 a.m. and was heading to a nearby shish-taouk restaurant with his friends. He said he lost track of them along the way, and retraced his steps after not finding them at the restaurant.

That's when he saw them talking to police on Chevrotière Street, and walked over.

Contesting the ticket he was issued that night, Blaney argued that he had uttered the phrase to his friends. But, when asked by one of the officers what he had just said, he repeated the phrase.

This, the judge ruled, counted as uttering an injurious statement to an agent of the peace in the exercise of their duty, a contravention of article nine of the bylaw.

Term is 'not flattering'

In his ruling, the judge wrote that, on its surface, "estie" is blasphemous, but that in this context it was used merely as a marker of intensity. The word is derived from the French word for Eucharist.

Thus it was the use of "douchebag" that was at the heart of the decision.

Citing the dictionary and the Stephen King novel The Stand, the judge determined that the term was certainly "not flattering."

"The expression is part, for better or especially for worse, of the culture and common language of Quebecers," the judge wrote.

In this context, the judge ruled that by involving himself in a police intervention concerning one of his friends, Blaney was pouring "oil on the fire."

Blaney was ordered to pay the minimum fine of $150. The maximum penalty for a first offence is $1,000.