All About Information

What happens when someone puts his or her electronic documents on another’s computer system, gets locked out and then wants the documents back?

This is a common problem today, and often arises in the context of departing employee disputes. It also engages one of the more interesting developing legal issues within this blog’s domain: do the traditional property torts - trespass, detinue and conversion - protect rights associated with intangible property?

While this could be the subject of a good paper, I’d simply like to point out a couple of developments South and North of the border.

In the United States, the New York Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion in Thyroff v. Nationwide Mutual Assurance Company in which it held that the tort of conversion should apply to intangible property - an insurance agent’s customer list in the circumstances in dispute.

There’s no judgement of equivalent strength in Canada yet, but the Prince Edward Island Supreme Court - Trial Division issued a decision in July called HZPC Americas Corp. that is consistent with the direction endorsed in Thyroff. (HZPC has not yet been published on CanLII.) In rejecting the defendant’s motion to strike a conversion claim, the Court challenged the traditional idea that an owner’s ability to control intangible property (including confidential business information) is not sufficient to justify application of the tort. It said:

The Defendants refer to infringement of intellectual property while the Plaintiff refers to conversion of commercial property interests. The Plaintiff’s claim is not based on infringement of a statutory right in intellectual property; but rather is classified by it as a proprietary right in commercial property. It is not necessary for the Plaintiff to plead or rely upon legislative provisions to pursue its claim based on a common law tort. The federal legislation can be viewed as providing additional benefits, and not exhausting a person’s civil remedies.

The Court quoted Professor David Vaver, who says that the traditional view is “pettifoggery” - a sure signal that there will be more on this issue to come.

There is a line of case law in which Canadian courts have held that “ordinary employees” can take steps in preparing to compete post-departure without violating their duty of loyality and fidelity. In this August 17th Saskatchewan Court of Appeal cause case, the court held that fiduciaries may also take such preparatory steps provided they do not usurp a corporate opportunity or otherwise breach the trust upon which their fiduciary status is based. In other words, evidence of preparation alone is not enough to prove a breach. The court said:

Applying the case law to these activities, the trial judge did not err in saying that Mr. Fleming did not breach the fiduciary duty owed to his employer. The steps taken were of an exploratory nature only and fall easily into the category of contemplation and casual discussions with others. I reach this conclusion even though these were activities that would have resulted in a business capable of competing directly with Ryly’s, if they had come to fruition. To use Professor Flannigan’s analysis, however, Mr. Fleming did not reach the point of opportunistically diverting his employer’s resources to his or her own self interest rather than for the limited purpose authorized by the employer. No resource belonging to the employer was used in Mr. Fleming’s activities.

Calyniuk Restaurants Inc. v. Fleming, 2007 SKCA 85 (CanLII).

In this United Kingdom departing employee case from this June, the High Court held that an employer had exclusive ownership of a contact list alleged by an employee to be his personal contact list because it was maintained on its computer system.

The defendant was a journalist who worked in trade publication and conference buisnesses for a number of years before joining the claimant, who operated a similar business. He gave evidence that he maintaned a personal contact list, updated it from time to time, and had over eight years of editorial and industry contacts amassed when he commenced employment with the claimant. Nine years later, and after transferring the list to an MS Outlook database maintained by the claimant and adding work-related contacts, the defendant left with two other employees to start a competing business. In addition to suing to recover damages for the defendant’s pre-departure breach of loyalty and fidelity, the claimant disputed his ownership of the list.

Although it held that the company had not effectively incorporated its computer use policy into the defendant’s contract of employment, the court nonetheless found it had exclusive ownership of the list. It made the following broad statement:

I am satisfied that where an address list is contained on Outlook or some similar program which is part of the employer’s e-mail system and backed up by the employer or by arrangement made with the employer, the database or list of information (depending whether one is applying the Database Regulations or the general law) will belong to the employer…

In all those circumstances, I find that such lists will be the property of the employer and may not be copied or removed in their entirety by employees for use outside their employment or after their employment comes to an end.

Because this is not likely to be appreciated by many employees, it is in my judgment highly desirable that employers should devise and publish an e-mail policy…

In the absence of such a laid down policy, I next have to consider the status of contact details which have been put on to an employer’s system by an employee for their own use outside their employment, in ignorance of the fact that they would thereby become part of the Claimant’s property…

In my judgment it is reasonable to imply in the absence of any laid down guidance a term that an employee will at the end of their employment be entitled to take copies of their own personal information and, where the information is person [sic.] and confidential to them, such as details of their doctor, banker or legal adviser, to remove them from the employer’s system.

Most forms of e-mail system will permit the creation of compartmentalised address books, so that ordinarily an employee will be able to put their own personal contact details of friends, relations, and the like into a personal address book. In those circumstances, in the absence of clear evidence of an e-mail policy, I would be inclined to the view that ownership of that part of the database resided with the employee…

In assessing the facts, the Court held that the defendant copied the entire mixed list for the purpose of competing with the defendant and that it would not be appropriate for it to parse the list. It ordered the sequestered database to be delivered up to the claimant and enjoined the defendant from using it except for contact information “known by other means.”

Pennwell Publishing (UK) Ltd v. Ornstien, [2007] EWHC 1570 (QB).

On August 31, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench declared that the plaintiff in a departing employee case was entitled to enforce a default order that allowed it direct access to a number of hard drives it had seized earlier in executing an Anton Piller order.

The plaintiff was granted an Anton Piller order at the outset of litigation. It seized hard drives but did not inspect them.

As the litigation proceeded, a case management judge ordered the defendants to serve and file an affidavit of records by a certain date, failing which the plaintiffs would have direct access to the hard drives (subject to confidentiality terms to be agreed upon or ordered). The parties subsequently consented to a joint confidentiality order.

The Court held that the defendants did not provide an adequate affidavit of records because they did not disclose a number of records related to their involvement in a consortium that had bid successfully for a contract formerly held by the plaintiff and did not disclose all relevant e-mails and deleted files. It also held that the defendants should have produced the passwords, systems files and software necessary to access files in their native format and should have processed the electronic records for export into a litigation support software program.

The Court also rejected the defendants’ justifications. It held that the records pertaining to the consortium would be adequately protected by the implied undertaking rule and the joint confidentiality order. It also held that the defendants had not shown that electronic production (as ordered) would be unduly burdensome. On this point, the Court said:

The unusually high level of disclosure imposed in this case is justified by: the underlying fact that the defendants were employees of the plaintiff when they began working in competition with the plaintiff, the judicial determination that this was an appropriate case in which to issue an Anton Piller order, the size of the claim, which exceeds $50 million, and the great IT expertise of the parties which presupposes that at least some of the work required to provide the required level of disclosure can be done in-house.

Spar Aerospace Limited v. Aerowerks Engineering Inc., 2007 ABQB 543 (CanLII).

Here is a good law.com article that raises the question, “Just when should an employer have access to a departed employee’s home computer or personal e-mail account?”

Consider a disability claim where an employer (as disability benefits insurer and defendant) seeks information about the time a departed employee who is claiming he has a total disability spends surfing the internet. Assume that seeking production of the employee’s home computer is a rational request because the employee has given evidence in discovery that he lives alone and is the sole user of his home computer. Is production of the home computer for forensic analysis justified or is this a just fishing expedition?

In Canada, there is a trio of British Columbia cases with facts not unlike this scenario: see Park v. Mullin, 2005 BCSC 1813, Ireland v. Low, 2006 BCSC 383 and Desgane v. Yuen, 2006 BCSC 955. In all three cases the British Columbia Supreme Court declined to order production of hardware after weighing the evidentiary value of the proposed production against the plaintiffs’ privacy rights.

It’s one thing, however, to fish for an employee’s personal information because it might be assistive. It’s another to seek production of evidence that’s not particularly personal or sensitive and that is central to the claim.

Now consider an employer who sues a departing employee for breach of confidence. An employee who takes business records needs to put them somewhere. The most obvious receptacle is his or her home computer.

Assuming the claim has merit, should the employer be entitled to know for sure whether the employee has (or has ever had) custody of its records? Is the probative value of the proposed production not very high given the difficulty in proving misuse of confidential information? In the context, is production of the actual computer warranted despite all the personal information it is likely to contain? I’m not aware off-hand of any Canadian breach of confidence cases in which production of a departed employee’s home computer has been ordered, but in the Ameriwood case cited in the law.com article a Missouri court answered these questions in the affirmative.

The Ontario Court of Appeal issued a short endorsement in Crystal Tile and Marble Ltd. v. Dixie Marble & Granite Inc. on August 20th, upholding a judgment that dismissed a claim against a high-performing ex-salesperson. Presumably the salesperson was not bound by a restrictive covenant because the claim was based on an alleged breach of fiduciary duty and breach of confidence. The Court endorsed the following passage from the trial judgment:

The fact that the business decision to rely so heavily on Mr. Miskiewicz may have turned out to be a less than prudent one is not sufficient to brand Mr. Miskiewcz as a as a fiduciary when the other hallmarks of a fiduciary relationship, such as the power to make or influence management decisions or set corporate policy, are absent. To find otherwise would mean that every salesperson, regardless of his or her position or authority in the business, would have a fiduciary duty simply because of his or her success in sales.

This comment is reminiscent of those made recently in Imperial Sheet Metal Ltd. v. Landry and Gray Metal Products, a decision of the New Brunswick Court of Appeal. The Court held that cases (including some leading Ontario cases) that find salespeople to be fiduciaries based on a vulnerability arising from exposure to customers are wrong: “too many employees of ‘humble origin’ are being swept into fiduciary net.” It also held that knowledge of customer needs and preferences generally does not have the quality of confidence necessary to found an action for breach of confidence.

These cases are significant for their denouncement of the case commonly made against departing salespersons who are not bound by restrictive covenants. They’re reason for employers to carefully consider bargaining reasonable restrictive covenants at the outset of the employment relationship.

On July 3rd the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed a motion for an interlocutory injunction in a departing employee case where the plaintiff claimed breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract (notice of resignation and non-solicitation provisions) and breach of confidence.  The claim and motion were brought after a senior investment advisor and his two subordinates joined a competitor.The award is most notable for its clear statement on the standard to be applied on the first part of the RJR-MacDonald test.