MONTREAL — David has beat Goliath in the protracted legal battle between the children’s producer formerly known as Cinar Corp. and the lone animator who accused the company of ripping him off.

On Wednesday Quebec Justice Claude Auclair awarded artist Claude Robinson $5.2 million, agreeing that his 1982 creation Robinson Curiosité was plagiarized by the company to make the children’s program Robinson Sucroé.

In 1996 Robinson launched a $2.5-million copyright-infringement suit in Quebec Superior Court against Cinar, claiming the company stole the cartoon character.

‘We are very happy. The judge clearly found this was a copyright violation,’ the director of Quebec writers’ association SARTEC, Yves Légaré, told Playback Daily.

SARTEC set up a fund of more than $80,000 to help Robinson cover the costs of his 13-year battle with the company. ‘It was a major priority for us. But we stood behind him because he had such a solid case. He had a great deal of proof,’ said Légaré.

‘I really want to salute his determination,’ he added. ‘For years he faced them all alone. And at the time they were one of the biggest production companies in the province.’

After making millions in the 1990s making children’s animation, Cinar fell from grace amid allegations it made much of its profits by making a range of false claims — including using Canadian names for American scriptwriters in order to collect Cancon tax rebates. No criminal charges were ever laid against husband-and-wife cofounders Micheline Charest or Ronald Weinberg, though the company ultimately paid $27.5-million to federal and provincial tax authorities.

In 2001 the new owners of Cinar launched a $116-million lawsuit against Weinberg, Charest, and ex-CFO Hasanain Panju. The company alleged the former executives had transferred U.S.$120 million of Cinar funds to companies in the Bahamas in the late 1990s without board approval. The case was settled out of court last year shortly before it was to go to trial.