Emails to competitor backfire on employees
Every month, Quebec judges and regulatory agencies issue dozens of rulings that, without making headlines, set the ground rules for business in Quebec.
Here are a few of the offbeat and/or consequential rulings rendered in recent weeks: It can’t be said enough; emails sent from work can come back to haunt you.
Two women who left a company, where they worked as sales director and assistant, and joined a competitor in 2011, have been ordered by a Superior Court judge not to approach any clients or suppliers of their former company until August 2012, after email retraced on a work computer showed they provided confidential information – including the list of 2011 and 2012 sales for each account – to the competitor before quitting.
The injunction also applies to their new employer.
Judge Paul Chaput further ordered that their computers and email accounts be analyzed by an independent computer expert to determine if any of the confidential data are there. Anything discovered must be returned to the original employer, a company that distributes cookies, candies and chocolates.
Judge Chaput said that, while the women had the right to seek new jobs, even with a competitor, they didn’t have the right to act in bad faith and remove or communicate confidential documents or information to a third party. A lawyer who sued a former tenant of a commercial building he owned for $56,304 in rent, taxes and costs failed to convince Quebec Court Judge Daniel Dortelus he’d respected his end of the contract.
In the end, his company was the one ordered to pay compensation of $175 to the other party.
The building in question, on St. Denis St., was rented in 2009 for five years at $3,000 a month by the operators of a restaurant. The very day it opened, it sustained water damage when a pipe burst in an overhead apartment also owned by the landlord.
The tenants said the landlord failed to repair damage caused by the water infiltration, a recurring problem that hindered business until the restaurant finally closed in 2010.
They said they complained several times and even notified the municipality, which sent inspectors, but got no co-operation from the owner, who told them he was a lawyer with contacts and their attempts to engage authorities would lead nowhere.
The landlord claimed he wasn’t aware of the water problem, although he knew there’d been a flood in the apartments upstairs, and in any case the lease made the tenant responsible for repairs.
In his ruling, Judge Dortelus noted the water problems originated in the apartments, which the restaurant operator didn’t have access to and therefore could not correct.
The landlord, he said, showed bad faith and “un- acceptable insouciance” in his attitude toward the tenant, even resorting to “intimidation.”
He ordered the lease revoked as of September 2010, reduced the amount sought in rent arrears by two-thirds to compensate for lost business and inconvenience, rejected completely the claim for costs and legal fees, and ordered the landlord to repay to the tenant a security deposit of $8,584, with the end result that the landlord owed the tenant $175, as well as court costs. A contractor who placed a lien on a Montreal building when the tenant didn’t pay for renovations failed to convince Superior Court Judge Michel Delorme he was entitled to the building as compensation.
In fact, Judge Delorme dismissed the claim and the lien, saying the owner of the building hadn’t even been notified of the tenant’s renovations, let alone okayed them.
The contractor said the bill totalled $99,000 for renovations made in 2008 to a building that housed a restaurant/ fish shop, which quickly went bankrupt.
Judge Delorme said the agreement for the work involved the contractor and restaurant operator, bypassing the owner completely, though the rental contract stipulated she approve any modifications. Since there was no agreement with her, there were no grounds for making her responsible for the unpaid bills.