Breach of duty of good faith when manager lured staff to another firm
Generally, unless an employee signs a non-competition agreement with their employer, they are free to leave their job and begin competing directly against this employer. However, every employee owes some “duty of good faith” to their current employer. The scope of this duty depends upon the role of the employee within the organisation. For employees with critical responsibilities within a company, this duty can even be elevated to a fiduciary duty.
A recent Supreme Court case discusses the duty of good faith in the context of an employee who left his employment for a competitor. This case involved a branch manager at RBC securities. He left his job at RBC taking, not only his clients, but also most of RBC’s investment advisors at the branch to a competing investment firm, Merrill Lynch. Interestingly, the manager had never signed a non-competition agreement with RBC and neither had any of the other advisors.
One would have thought the lack of a non-competition agreement would have settled the issue in favour of the manager. However, the court felt that the manager still owed RBC a duty of good faith which included making sure that his fellow investment advisors stayed with RBC. He was found liable for 1.5 million dollars in damages for lost profits to RBC over a 5 year period.
Even without a non-competition agreement, there are limits to what an employee can do in the name of free competition and career opportunity.
Women’s networking breakfast
This morning, I went to Lisa MacLeod’s latest Nepean-Carleton Women in Business breakfast held in Barrhaven. Anyone who reads my blog knows I have a particular fondness for women’s-only business events and this one is always great. Angela Sutcliffe was the speaker today. She talked about some of the challenges women face in networking. It doesn’t matter how many talks on ‘networking’ that I hear, I always realize that I am doing it the wrong way- Did you know, for example, that you should bring your daytimer to all the events you attend?
If you schedule your events this far ahead of time, the next women’s breakfast with Lisa is being held on April 3rd.
Top female entrepreneurs
Profit magazine has released its list of the 100 most profitable companies owned by women entrepreneurs in Canada. If you read the article that accompanies the list, it cites some important differences between male-owned businesses and those owned by women. 85% of women-owned businesses have less than 5 employees, and revenues generated by these firms falls below half of the revenue generated by male-owned businesses. Some things to think about…
A couple of entries on the list that caught my eye- a woman who owns a car dealership in Waterloo, a restauranteur in Moncton, and a coffee importer/roaster.
Nepean Chamber awards 2008
Shari Westman won the Businesswoman of the Year at the Nepean Chamber of Commerce Business Awards, held on October 16th. Shari’s business, Comfort Keepers, provides home care services to seniors. Congratulations, Shari!
‘Corrective advertising’ damages
A post on ipblog.ca mentions a Florida case which imposed damages on a Canadian company for knowingly using a domain name that caused confusion with the business of a U.S. trademark holder. The Canadian company (using the same name as the American company) had a website which generated higher Google rankings than the website of its American competitor. The Canadian company was ordered to pay for corrective advertising which would increase the page ranking of the American website.
