We acted for the defendants in a “departing employees” dispute. This involved a situation where former employees began a new business that was alleged to be in contravention of obligations to their ex-employer. The former employer alleged that the ex-employees (who were unionized employees) and their fledgling company were using and benefitting from confidential information one of the ex-employees had taken from the former employer. The former employer claimed damages and brought on an injunction application against the defendants. We successfully defended the injunction claim on several grounds, one of which was a threshold jurisdiction issue – that this dispute was a collective agreement matter and should be heard by an arbitrator rather than the Court. The BC Supreme Court ruled in favor of our clients on the jurisdiction issue, dismissing the injunction application.
This employment law decision is an important ruling as to the appropriate venue to determine disputes about competition of ex-employees where a collective agreement exists.