Dare Foods heiress suing brothers

Cut from business and destitute, lawsuit claims

Carolyn Ruth Dare-Wilfred, an heiress with a stake in Dare Foods Group, wants an Ontario court to issue an order that could put control of the family-owned company up for auction.

In a statement of claim filed last Friday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the woman claims her brothers, Bryan Robert Dare and Graham Neal Dare, have effectively shut her out of the business. She adds they are paying themselves millions of dollars in dividends while leaving her destitute.

Her legal action seeks relief under a provision of the Ontario Business Corporation Act called the oppression remedy. If she convinces the court her brothers have been acting in an “oppressive or unfairly prejudicial” manner, she can ask a judge to pick from a range of options. These include an order that would force her brothers to buy her stake at fair market value or one that would put control of the food company up for public auction.

The Canadian-born Dare-Wilfred, who lives in New Zealand with her U.S.-born husband, Harmon Wilfred, say they have been struggling financially since four of their five businesses were lost after the Christchurch earthquake in 2010.

In the lawsuit, which contains allegations that have not been proven in court, she claims she has been “deliberately isolated” from the business since 1998 when she married Wilfred. The marriage took place against the wishes of her father Carl, who effectively controlled the Dare Foods empire until he died in 2014.

“Neither her father, Carl, nor her brothers, Graham and Bryan, have ever accepted Harmon into the family and it has been a point of conflict,” the lawsuit states.

The woman and her husband, a self-proclaimed “whistleblower,” migrated to New Zealand in 2001 because they feared unfair prosecutions by U.S. and Canadian authorities on false charges, the Financial Post reported last year.

Dare-Wilfred also claims she is a victim of gender discrimination.

“As a female in a traditional German household, she was always treated differently from her brothers and was discriminated against because she was a female,” the suit alleges.

Dare-Wilfred worked at the company until 2001. The claim says she was paid $30,000 to $50,000 a year for a marketing job.

She sought help from her father to help finance her move to New Zealand. At the time, her father and brothers agreed to buy 25 per cent of her shares in a holding company called Serad, which owns 80 per cent of Dare. She received $5 million for the sale, which she claims was a 50-per-cent discount to their fair market value.

Since that 2001 share sale, Dare-Wilfred claims her brothers have boosted their holdings in the company and paid themselves “tens of millions” in dividends. She did receive $341,250 a year for five years in exchange for agreeing not to sell her stake, but has received nothing since 2006, she alleges.

“Notwithstanding that Carolyn is a significant shareholder in Serad, and Dare is a very successful international company she receives no financial benefit from this very valuable investment and in fact struggles to make ends meet as a result of the impact that various natural disasters have had on her and Harmon’s businesses in New Zealand.”

A spokeswoman for Dare said Tuesday the company is still studying the court filing and has no further comment.