A recent survey shows that departing employees are leaving the office with more than the photos of their kids – they’re walking off with trade secrets and confidential company information. A majority of the survey respondents said they burned confidential information onto a CD or DVD, around 40% dragged it to a USB drive or e-mailed documents to themselves. 

In Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada recently weighed in on this area of law. In RBC Dominion Securities Inc. v. Merrill Lynch Canada Inc., 2008 SCC 54 , virtually all of the investment advisors at an RBC branch walked out one day (without notice) and joined RBC’s competitor, Merrill Lynch.  RBC sued its departing employees and also sued Merrill Lynch and its manager.  The case went up through trial, to the BC Court of Appeal, and was appealed up to the Supreme Court of Canada.  The court decided that the departing employees owed a duty of “good faith” to RBC, but that none of them was a “fiduciary”  – a special category which applies to employees with a special relationship to the corporation, such as senior managers, executives, directors and officers.  In the absence of a non-competition clause or fiduciary relationship, the departing employees had the legal right to leave RBC and to compete with their former employer. However, the court was clear that a departing employee might be liable for specific wrongs, such as improper use of confidential information of the former employer. 

Watch for our seminar on this and other topics at our Events page.

 

Calgary 11:30 MST