Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope and clarity of the interlocutory injunction and Anton Piller–type orders, including whether they clearly prohibited the specific access, transfer and consultation of seized electronic documents.
• Standard and burden of proof for civil contempt (outrage au tribunal), requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt of knowledge of the order, clarity of its terms, and intentional violation.
• Characterisation of defendants’ handling of seized data (temporary blocking of Sirco’s access, consulting 70 documents, transferring an email to “Deleted Items”) as either prohibited “use” of confidential information or mere internal handling without commercial prejudice.
• Effect of prior conduct by the court-appointed experts (Sirco) and the independent supervising lawyer in restoring the defendants’ access to their own cloud accounts, and how this “external circumstance” affected the clarity of the protocol.
• Assessment of whether temporarily removing Sirco’s access to the SharePoint and email environment actually obstructed, or created a serious risk of obstructing, the administration of justice.
• Evaluation of whether the contempt application itself was abusive or intimidatory, despite the court ultimately finding that the case fell into a “grey zone” rather than meeting the threshold for contempt.

Background and commercial relationship

M.C.M.E.L. inc. and its related company 9440-1387 Québec inc. (together referred to as MCMEL) manufacture ornamental and architectural metal products, including aluminum railings and balconies. For more than ten years, MCMEL supplied aluminum railings and balconies to 7639295 Canada inc., operating under the name ALDG, which resold and installed these products for its own clientele. The parties therefore had a long-standing commercial relationship built around the distribution and installation of MCMEL’s products.
In autumn 2023, this business relationship came to an end by mutual agreement. Around the same time, four employees left MCMEL—Jacques Champagne, Maxime Desmarais, Josée Mouffe and Francis Carrier—and were hired by ALDG. MCMEL soon suspected that these former employees had taken confidential information belonging to MCMEL and that ALDG was using it to compete unfairly in the marketplace.

Allegations of misuse of confidential information

In its originating application for various injunctive and Anton Piller–type orders, MCMEL alleged that the four former employees had had access to confidential information and that there were strong reasons to believe they were using it, together with ALDG, to conduct unfair competition. MCMEL characterised the “informations confidentielles subtilisées” (stolen confidential information) as a wide range of business assets: marketing materials, technical drawings, engineering test reports, supplier and customer price lists, market studies, customer lists and contact details, purchase orders and quotes, sales and commission reports, business development documents, employee directories and other documents related to its operations. These materials were said to have been taken and used for the benefit of ALDG.
MCMEL further alleged that ALDG and the former employees were exploiting this information to solicit MCMEL’s customers with identical products at lower prices, thereby causing serious harm and justifying urgent court intervention to prevent continuing misuse of confidential business information.

The initial injunction and Anton Piller–type order

On 17 November 2023, Justice Garin of the Superior Court granted a provisional interlocutory injunction for ten days, ordering the defendants not to use the “Informations confidentielles subtilisées” as defined in MCMEL’s application. At the same time, the court granted an Anton Piller–type order authorising MCMEL’s agents to enter the defendants’ premises without prior notice, conduct searches and seize electronic equipment, cloud accounts and physical documents that might contain relevant evidence.
The order provided that all seized evidence would be placed in the custody and under the control of an independent IT expert firm, Sirco inc., which would retain it and return it to the defendants only upon expiry of the order and any renewals. The order also required the defendants to cooperate with Sirco and the independent supervising lawyer (Me Jonathan Pierre-Étienne), including by providing access to electronic accounts, and prohibited them from deleting, destroying, altering or hiding any paper or electronic documents during execution of the order.
This provisional order, later referred to as the Garin order, was renewed and modified, notably by Justice Lucas on 29 November 2023 and Justice Rogers on 1 March 2024, to reflect the evolving management of the seized data.

The protocol for review and destruction of seized materials

Justice Lucas’s order added a detailed protocol governing the preservation, review and eventual destruction of seized material. This protocol was renewed by Justice Rogers on 1 March 2024. Under the protocol, the independent supervising lawyer was to send the defendants’ lawyers a detailed inventory of the seized digital evidence, prepared by Sirco, before any materials would be given to MCMEL’s lawyers. The defendants then had fifteen days to raise objections, such as privilege or legitimate confidentiality, before any contested documents could be transmitted.
Sirco was to erase information originating from MCMEL that was not contested before returning equipment and access to cloud accounts to the defendants, while the independent supervising lawyer retained a copy of all seized data as evidence. In practice, the inventory consisted of lists of digital documents identified mainly by numerical codes and file-type suffixes (pdf, jpg, xlsx), which made it difficult for the defendants and their lawyers to understand the content in order to frame objections. The protocol therefore allowed the defendants to review seized documents in the presence of the supervising lawyer, with Sirco’s assistance, to help them identify and assert any objections before communication to MCMEL.
However, this procedure was never actually followed. The first inventory lists were sent by Me Pierre-Étienne to the defendants’ lawyers on 27 February 2024. The defendants’ lawyers returned the lists with their objections on 4 March 2024 without requesting an in-person review session with the supervising lawyer.

Renewal of the order and key events in March 2024

On 1 March 2024 at 10:42 a.m., Justice Rogers renewed relevant parts of Justice Lucas’s order, including the provisions relating to the review and destruction protocol. The Rogers order was emailed to the defendants’ lawyers that same afternoon at 14:14. Later that day, at 17:38, ALDG’s president, Claude Poirier, asked ALDG’s IT service provider, Dominic Martine, to withdraw Sirco’s access to the defendants’ cloud environment. This access was effectively disabled on 3 March 2024 at 09:32.
On 4 March 2024 at 12:17, Claude Poirier moved an email and ten attachments concerning MCMEL from his inbox to his “Deleted Items” folder. That same day at 14:54, Sirco discovered its access had been removed and notified Me Pierre-Étienne, who in turn contacted the defendants’ counsel at 15:16 to seek an explanation. At 16:04, Claude Poirier emailed a Sirco analyst to apologise for his “error”, indicating he believed Sirco’s mandate had ended on 1 March, and he instructed Mr. Martine to restore access. Meanwhile, between 18:01 and 18:38 on 4 March, France Hutchison, who held a managerial role at ALDG and acted as Poirier’s right hand, opened and viewed 70 scanned documents stored in ALDG’s SharePoint environment that were part of the seized material. On 5 March at 08:08, Mr. Martine restored Sirco’s access to the cloud accounts.
Also on 4 March, the defendants’ lawyers returned the inventory of seized documents, annotated with their objections, to the independent supervising lawyer via several email transmissions.

The contempt proceedings and charges

On 17 July 2024, ALDG, Claude Poirier and France Hutchison were summoned to appear on ten counts of contempt of court (outrage au tribunal). MCMEL alleged that the defendants had breached the court’s orders by using confidential information belonging to MCMEL, by obstructing Sirco’s execution of its mandate, and by violating the court-ordered protocol for review and destruction of seized evidence. Subsequently, on 18 September 2025, MCMEL withdrew four of the ten counts, leaving six: four against ALDG and one each against Poirier and Hutchison.
The remaining counts essentially raised three issues: whether Poirier and Hutchison had “used” the “Informations confidentielles subtilisées” in breach of paragraph 7 of the Rogers order when Poirier moved the email and attachments and Hutchison consulted 70 documents; whether ALDG had obstructed the due administration of justice by withdrawing Sirco’s access to the cloud environment on 3–5 March 2024; and whether ALDG had violated the protocol for review and destruction of seized documents by permitting unsupervised access to seized materials.

Legal framework: contempt and clarity of orders

The court recalled that, under articles 57 and 58 of the Code of Civil Procedure and the guidance from the Supreme Court in Carey v. Laiken, civil contempt requires proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, that: (i) the alleged contemnor knew of the order; (ii) the order’s terms were clear and unambiguous; and (iii) the alleged contemnor intentionally committed an act that the order prohibits. In addition, conduct that obstructs the course of justice or undermines the authority or dignity of the court can constitute contempt. The proof of contempt must exclude any reasonable doubt, a higher threshold than the ordinary civil balance of probabilities.

Knowledge of the Rogers order

Although the Rogers order was not personally served on the individual defendants, the parties had agreed that service would be effected on their lawyers, who in fact received the order by email on 1 March 2024. The contents had also been negotiated in advance between the parties and their counsel. Given ALDG’s small size and Poirier’s central role as the driving mind directing the defence, as well as Hutchison’s role as his close associate in management, the court inferred that all three defendants (ALDG, Poirier and Hutchison) were aware of the Rogers order as of 1 March 2024, even without formal personal service.

Alleged improper “use” of confidential information

MCMEL argued that Poirier’s transfer of an email and attachments to the “Deleted Items” folder and Hutchison’s review of 70 SharePoint documents on 4 March amounted to the prohibited “use” of the “Informations confidentielles subtilisées” under paragraph 7 of the Rogers order. The order prohibited the defendants from “se servir”, making commercial use of, reproducing, transferring, disposing of, alienating, selling, communicating or sending the confidential information to anyone, directly or indirectly.
The court examined both the language and the underlying purpose of the order. “Se servir de” (to make use of) could be interpreted broadly, but in context the order sought to prevent the defendants from using the information in ways that could harm MCMEL, particularly any form of commercial exploitation or communication to third parties. Nothing in the evidence suggested that Poirier or Hutchison used the seized material for a commercial purpose or in a way that actually prejudiced MCMEL; rather, Poirier merely changed the location of an email within his own mailbox, and Hutchison opened and viewed documents without evidence of onward transmission or business use.
A further evidentiary problem undermined MCMEL’s case: the prosecution characterised the documents involved as “Informations confidentielles subtilisées”, yet the evidence did not establish that the specific email, attachments or 70 documents were confidential or had been illegally removed from MCMEL. It emerged that ALDG had been a business partner of MCMEL for years, had participated in the market study that formed one of the attachments, and had received almost all of the 70 documents from MCMEL in the normal course of their commercial relationship. This made it impossible to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendants were making prohibited use of stolen confidential information.
On this basis, the court acquitted the defendants of the counts alleging prohibited use of confidential information (charges 2A1, 2B1 and 2C1).

Temporary withdrawal of Sirco’s access and alleged obstruction

Another set of counts focused on whether ALDG obstructed the administration of justice and breached the cooperation obligations in the Rogers and Lucas orders by withdrawing Sirco’s access to ALDG’s cloud environment from 3 to 5 March 2024 (counts 2A5 and 2A6). Poirier had instructed the IT provider to remove Sirco’s access, later explaining in an affidavit that he mistakenly believed Sirco’s mandate had ended on 1 March.
The court noted that the orders imposed a duty on the defendants to cooperate with Sirco and the supervising lawyer but did not explicitly prohibit them from withdrawing Sirco’s access at any point. A refusal by Poirier to restore access after Sirco’s complaint on 4 March could have been a clear breach of the cooperation duty, but that is not what happened: once informed that Sirco’s mandate continued, Poirier promptly instructed that access be restored, which occurred the next morning.
Moreover, the temporary withdrawal of access had little real impact on Sirco’s work. Sirco discovered the block in the afternoon of 4 March and regained access at 08:08 on 5 March. At worst, this produced a delay of several hours. The key witness from Sirco did not testify that this short interruption had hindered the firm’s ability to carry out its mandate. Because contempt requires proof that the conduct actually obstructed, or at least created a serious risk of obstructing, the administration of justice, the court concluded that this brief interruption did not meet that threshold. As a result, ALDG was acquitted of the counts alleging obstruction and breach of cooperation (2A5 and 2A6).

Alleged breach of the protocol for review and destruction

The final contested count (2A7) concerned whether ALDG breached the protocol by allowing Poirier and Hutchison to access seized documents on 4 March without supervision by the independent supervising lawyer and Sirco. MCMEL contended that the protocol implicitly prohibited any such unsupervised access and that the defendants were obliged to follow the supervised-review mechanism whenever they wished to consult seized data.
The court examined paragraph 33(5) of the Lucas order, as carried forward by the Rogers order. This provision expressly allowed the defendants and their lawyers to examine seized evidence in the presence of the independent supervising lawyer and with the assistance of the IT expert when necessary to position themselves, that is, to raise objections based on privilege or legitimate interests. The wording, however, was permissive: it did not explicitly ban all unsupervised access by the defendants. Its purpose was to provide a safe avenue to review documents before they were shared with MCMEL, while ensuring the defendants had no copies of the seized materials at that stage.
Here, a crucial factual complication arose. Sirco had restored the defendants’ access to their cloud accounts on 9 December 2023, less than three weeks after the seizure. From then on, the defendants had unrestricted access—albeit monitored by Sirco—to their email and SharePoint accounts and could view and even manipulate data without prior authorisation or supervision. The independent supervising lawyer learned of this in December and expressed surprise but did not intervene to reverse the decision.
This meant that, by March 2024, the condition contemplated by paragraph 33(5)—that the defendants would have no copies of the seized evidence and would need supervised access—no longer existed in practice. The initial intention of the orders was clearly to deny the defendants access to the seized material while it was being processed, but the combination of Sirco’s decision and the supervising lawyer’s inaction amounted to an “external circumstance” that obscured the meaning of the protocol and blurred the line between compliant and non-compliant access.
In light of the Supreme Court’s guidance that an order is not “clear and unambiguous” if external circumstances cast doubt on its meaning, the court found that the defendants could not be convicted of contempt for breaching a protocol whose application had become uncertain. The ambiguity created by the restored access prevented a finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that ALDG had clearly and knowingly violated a precise and unequivocal obligation. Consequently, ALDG was acquitted on count 2A7.

Assessment of alleged abuse and final outcome

The defendants argued that MCMEL’s contempt application was abusive and intended to intimidate them, noting that they had free access to the documents and had not used them for any illegitimate purpose. They pointed out that, in November 2023, a Sirco representative had told Poirier that moving an email and attachments to the “Deleted Items” folder did not actually delete the data or prevent Sirco from examining it—an explanation consistent with MCMEL’s withdrawal at hearing of the earlier counts alleging deletion of confidential information. The court acknowledged that Hutchison’s review of the documents on 4 March might have been undertaken in good faith to help formulate objections to their transmission to MCMEL’s lawyers, especially since the annotated SharePoint list was sent to the supervising lawyer less than an hour after she opened the 70 files.
Nonetheless, while the court ultimately acquitted the defendants of all remaining contempt charges, it declined to characterise MCMEL’s application as abusive. Poirier’s “error” in removing Sirco’s access was not satisfactorily explained; the transfer of documents and unsupervised consultation of seized materials reflected a degree of carelessness and created legitimate suspicion that the defendants might be trying to circumvent the seizure regime. The judge described the situation as a “grey zone”: troubling enough to justify the application, but not sufficient to cross the “red lines” necessary for a contempt conviction.
In the result, the Superior Court acquitted all defendants—ALDG (7639295 Canada inc.), Claude Poirier and France Hutchison—of the six remaining contempt counts (2A1, 2A5, 2A6, 2A7, 2B1 and 2C1) and ordered that they recover their legal costs in the contempt proceedings. The judgment does not set out any specific monetary figure for those costs, nor does it award any damages, so the exact total amount in favour of the successful defendants cannot be determined from this decision.