The 2017 Supreme Court decision, Montréal (City) v Dorval, confirms that article 2930 of the Civil Code of Québec, which grants protection against short limitation periods in lawsuits based on bodily injury, can extend to those who themselves cannot claim any bodily injury but who suffered an indirect loss. To reach this result, Justice Wagner (as he then was) for the majority relies heavily on the emerging notion of “initial interference” which was first recognized by the Court in the 2013 Cinar Corp v Robinson decision. The aim of this paper is to examine the content and form of the concept of initial interference as used in the majority decision in Dorval. This analysis draws on insights from law, terminology and linguistics to show to what extent the Québec legal community has already internalized the notion of initial interference even though the notion is as yet untheorized.