Dollar sign
Popular Toronto landmark sparks $2.5M lawsuit,
In less than a year, the Toronto sign has become a fixture in the city, welcoming tourists, starring in Instagram feeds and lighting up with custom colours to mark both celebrations and tragedies such as the recent terrorist attacks in Belgium.
But the Nathan Phillips Square tourist attraction is now the subject of a $2.5million lawsuit over who had the original idea. Markham-based creative brand marketing consultant Bruce Barrow has filed a civil suit against the city of Toronto as well as Mayor John Tory, councillors Josh Colle and Michael Thompson. Barrow alleges that he had the original concept for the three-dimensional, block-lettered, LED-illuminated sign and that he shared it with them in a confidential proposal in 2014.
Barrow told the Star he can recall turning on the TV in July 2015 when the sign was installed at Nathan Phillips Square before the opening ceremonies of the Pan-Am Games, “and there was Mayor Tory standing in front of this huge sign that looked exactly like what I’d presented.”
“My jaw dropped,” he said, calling it a “pit-in-your-stomach kind of feeling.
“Ideally I would have been engaged, I would have been recognized, and there would have been some sort of compensation for the idea.”
City spokesperson Wynna Brown wrote in an email to the Star that there is “no basis for this claim” and the city’s position is “being vigorously defended.”
Barrow is asking for $1.75 million in damages for “misappropriation of confidential information and breach of confidence,” as well as $750,000 in punitive, aggravated and exemplary damages.
Barrow alleges he met with Colle in March 2014 to discuss a 29-page business proposal for a project that he detailed to Colle in advance — a white, free-standing sign spelling out “Toronto.”
The lawsuit says that in July 2014 Barrow met with Thompson, chair of Toronto’s economic development and culture committee, and Michael Williams, general manager of economic development and culture at the city, to discuss the plan. It also says that in that same month, Barrow contacted and shared the proposal with then-mayoral candidate John Tory’s campaign. The statement of claim alleges that Tory campaign adviser Barry Avrich sent Barrow an email expressing interest in the idea.
There was then “radio silence” from the city until January 2015, when “someone notified (Barrow) that there was a request for proposal from the city for contractors to present exactly what he had proposed to them in confidence,” Barrow’s lawyer John H. Simpson told the Star. “I think the timeline sort of speaks for itself,” Simpson added.
The city’s statement of defence, obtained by the Star, says “the sign is the product of the creative work of City of Toronto staff which stems all the way back to 2010,” and was inspired by a similar sign in Amsterdam. It states that the sign “bears no resemblance” to the ideas Barrow suggested and emerged from a 2010 initiative called “xoTO” meant to foster civic engagement among Torontonians.
The sign idea, according to the statement of defence, was revived for the Pan Am Games in a February 2014 proposal, circulated among senior management in the Economic Development and Culture division and presented to Williams in April 2014. The document says city staff came up with all the details of the sign, including look, size, use and location without any knowledge of Barrow’s presentation and that his meetings with the defendants happened after the design of the sign.
None of the allegations in the statement of defence nor the statement of claim has been proven in court.
Brown said given the legal proceedings, the city is not commenting further. Representatives from Tory and Colle’s offices likewise would not comment.
Thompson and Avrich could not be immediately reached for comment. Barrow told the Star he “presented the idea in good faith to the city.”