Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope and meaning of the injunction’s prohibition on “se servir de” (using) confidential information and whether mere viewing or internal email-folder transfers breached that order.
• Sufficiency and clarity of the Rogers and Lucas injunctions and protocol, including whether access to seized data outside supervised review was clearly forbidden.
• Proof standard for civil contempt (outrage au tribunal) and whether MCMEL established, beyond a reasonable doubt, intentional violation of clear court orders.
• Impact of ALDG’s temporary removal of Sirco’s access to cloud accounts on the administration of justice and whether this created a serious risk of obstructing justice.
• Evidentiary characterization of the material viewed or moved by the defendants, and whether it qualified as “Informations confidentielles subtilisées” rather than ordinary commercial documents previously shared.
• Effect of Sirco’s and the independent supervising lawyer’s conduct (restoring access to accounts and not correcting it) on the clarity and enforceability of the protocol governing seized evidence.

Background and commercial relationship
M.C.M.E.L. Inc. (MCMEL) is a Quebec-based manufacturer of 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., doing business as ALDG, which in turn resold and installed these products for its own customers. This long-standing commercial relationship framed the flow of technical, pricing and marketing information between the companies. In the autumn of 2023, MCMEL and ALDG agreed to terminate their business relationship. Around the same time, four employees left MCMEL—Jacques Champagne, Maxime Desmarais, Josée Mouffe and Francis Carrier—and were hired by ALDG. MCMEL quickly became suspicious that these former employees had taken confidential business information belonging to MCMEL and that ALDG was using this information to compete unfairly by approaching MCMEL’s customers with similar products at better prices.

Allegations of stolen confidential information and unfair competition
MCMEL instituted legal proceedings in the Superior Court of Québec alleging that the four former employees had access to, and misappropriated, a broad range of confidential material which they were now using, together with ALDG, to compete unlawfully. MCMEL described these “informations confidentielles subtilisées” (stolen confidential information) as including, among other things, marketing material, technical drawings, engineering test reports, supplier price lists, client price lists, market studies, client lists and contact information, purchase orders and quotations, sales and commission reports, business development documents, employee directories, and other operational documents. MCMEL claimed that ALDG held and used this confidential information for commercial gain, notably by soliciting MCMEL’s customers and offering identical products at lower prices. It argued that this conduct constituted unfair competition causing significant harm, and that, without urgent court intervention, the defendants would continue to use these misappropriated confidential materials to worsen MCMEL’s loss of business.

Injunctions and Anton Piller-type order
On 17 November 2023, Justice Garin granted a provisional interlocutory injunction for ten days. The order prohibited the defendants from using the “Informations confidentielles subtilisées” as defined in MCMEL’s originating application. The court also issued 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 likely to contain evidence of the alleged misuse of confidential information. All seized evidence was to be placed in the custody and control of the computer forensics firm Sirco Inc., acting under the oversight of an independent supervising lawyer, Me Jonathan Pierre-Étienne. The order required the defendants to cooperate fully with Sirco and the independent counsel by granting access to their computer accounts and prohibited them from deleting, destroying, modifying or concealing any paper or electronic documents while the order was being executed. The Garin order was later renewed and modified, including by Justice Lucas on 29 November 2023 and Justice Rogers on 1 March 2024.

Protocol for handling seized evidence
Justice Lucas’s order added a detailed protocol governing the preservation, review and destruction of the seized material. Under this protocol, Sirco was to compile an inventory of the seized digital evidence. This inventory would be sent by the supervising lawyer to the defendants’ counsel, who would then have 15 days to raise objections to any items they claimed were privileged or otherwise legitimately protected. The protocol provided that MCMEL could subsequently request destruction of any MCMEL-confidential documents not challenged by the defendants. It also contemplated that Sirco would delete MCMEL’s information that was not contested before returning electronic equipment and access to cloud accounts to the defendants and required the independent supervising lawyer to retain a copy of all seized documents and data. In practice, the inventory prepared by Sirco consisted of long lists of digital files identified only by numeric strings and file-type suffixes (pdf, jpg, xlsx), making it difficult for defendants to identify content and formulate precise objections. The protocol therefore allowed defendants, when necessary, to consult seized documents in the presence of the independent counsel and with Sirco’s technical assistance, to help them determine which items to contest. However, that supervised procedure was never actually used. The first inventory lists were sent to defence counsel on 27 February 2024 and were returned with objections on 4 March 2024 without any supervised review sessions.

Seizure and access to electronic data
On 21 November 2023, bailiffs seized laptops, tablets and mobile phones of the defendants. Sirco obtained access to the defendants’ email inboxes and ALDG’s SharePoint cloud account, and at that stage blocked the defendants’ access to all such data. Subsequently, and crucially for the eventual contempt motion, Sirco restored the defendants’ access to their cloud-based accounts on or about 9 December 2023. From that date, the defendants had direct, non-supervised access (albeit monitored by Sirco) to their email accounts and ALDG’s SharePoint. Neither Sirco nor the supervising lawyer effectively reversed this situation, even though Me Pierre-Étienne testified that he was surprised to learn of it. This factual backdrop later influenced the court’s assessment of whether the orders and protocol were sufficiently clear to support contempt findings.

Events of 1–5 March 2024
On 1 March 2024 at 10:42 a.m., Justice Rogers renewed parts of Justice Lucas’s order, including the provisions concerning the review and destruction protocol. The same day at 2:14 p.m., MCMEL’s counsel emailed a copy of the Rogers order to the defendants’ lawyers, who, by agreement, received service on behalf of their clients. Later on 1 March, at 5:38 p.m., ALDG’s president, Claude Poirier, asked ALDG’s IT service provider, Dominic Martine, to remove Sirco’s access to the defendants’ cloud accounts. Martine actually deactivated that access on 3 March at 9:32 a.m. On 4 March at 12:17 p.m., Claude Poirier moved an email and ten attachments relating to MCMEL from his inbox to the “Deleted Items” folder. That same afternoon at 2:54 p.m., Sirco discovered that its access had been withdrawn and its investigator, Geneviève Chauvin, informed the supervising lawyer, who in turn emailed defendants’ counsel at 3:16 p.m. asking for an explanation. At 4:04 p.m., Claude Poirier wrote to Sirco’s analyst, apologising for his “bévue” and claiming he believed Sirco’s mandate had ended on 1 March, while simultaneously instructing Martine to restore Sirco’s access. Between 6:01 p.m. and 6:38 p.m. on 4 March, Poirier’s spouse and ALDG director, France Hutchison, opened and viewed 70 scanned documents stored in ALDG’s SharePoint, all of which originated from MCMEL. On 5 March at 8:08 a.m., Martine restored Sirco’s access to the cloud accounts. Also on 4 March, defence counsel returned the inventory lists (originally circulated on 27 February), now annotated with the defendants’ objections, to the supervising lawyer.

Outrage au tribunal (contempt) proceedings
On 17 July 2024, ALDG, Claude Poirier and France Hutchison were summoned to appear on ten counts of contempt of court. MCMEL alleged that they had violated the Superior Court’s injunctions and the protocol by using confidential information belonging to MCMEL, obstructing Sirco’s execution of its mandate and breaching the review and destruction protocol. The defendants pleaded not guilty. On 18 September 2025, MCMEL withdrew four of the ten counts, leaving six counts in issue: four against ALDG and one each against Poirier and Hutchison. The key questions for the court were whether, as of 1 March 2024, the defendants knew of the then-operative Rogers injunction, whether its terms were clear and unequivocal, and whether they intentionally engaged in conduct prohibited by that injunction. Additionally, the court had to determine whether ALDG’s actions, particularly the temporary removal of Sirco’s access, constituted an interference with the administration of justice or an affront to the authority and dignity of the court, which could independently ground contempt. Under article 61(2) of the Code of Civil Procedure, proof of contempt must exclude any reasonable doubt, a standard more demanding than the civil balance-of-probabilities test.

Knowledge of the injunction and its terms
The court concluded that ALDG, Claude Poirier and France Hutchison were aware of the Rogers injunction from 1 March 2024. By agreement, service of the order took place via email to defence counsel rather than by personal service on the defendants, and the terms had been negotiated by counsel in advance. Poirier was found to be the driving force behind ALDG and the one directing the defence, while Hutchison, in a senior role in a small company, acted as his right hand. Even though formal personal service of the order was absent, the surrounding circumstances permitted the court to infer their knowledge. The more difficult question was whether, against this background, the Rogers injunction and the protocol were sufficiently clear to ground criminal-standard liability for contempt in the various alleged breaches.

Alleged misuse of confidential information: viewing and moving documents
Several counts (2A1, 2B1, 2C1) asserted that, on 4 March 2024, Poirier and Hutchison unlawfully “used” the “Informations confidentielles subtilisées” contrary to paragraph 7 of the Rogers order when Poirier moved an email and its ten attachments into his Deleted Items folder and Hutchison opened and viewed 70 documents in ALDG’s SharePoint. The order prohibited the defendants and their representatives from “se servir,” making commercial use, reproducing, transferring, disposing of, selling, communicating or sending the “Informations confidentielles subtilisées,” directly or indirectly. The court analysed the phrase “se servir de” (to use) in its ordinary sense of “using” or “making use of,” and interpreted the prohibition in light of the protective purpose of the injunction—namely to prevent defendants or third parties from deploying MCMEL’s confidential information in a way that could harm MCMEL, particularly through commercial exploitation. On the evidence, there was no indication that Poirier and Hutchison used the seized evidence in a commercial way or in a manner actually prejudicial to MCMEL. Moreover, the prosecution theory was framed around “Informations confidentielles subtilisées,” yet the record did not show that the specific materials Poirier moved or Hutchison viewed were in fact confidential or stolen. The court noted that ALDG and MCMEL had been business partners until 2023; during that relationship, ALDG had participated in MCMEL’s market study that was among the attachments moved by Poirier, and MCMEL’s own director acknowledged that MCMEL had itself sent almost all of the 70 documents viewed by Hutchison to ALDG in the ordinary course. In that context, the court found it impossible to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants had used confidential information illegally obtained from MCMEL, and acquitted them on counts 2A1, 2B1 and 2C1.

Temporary removal of Sirco’s access and alleged obstruction
Other counts (2A5 and 2A6) focused on whether ALDG obstructed justice and breached paragraph 8 of the Rogers order by cutting Sirco’s access to the defendants’ cloud environment between 3 and 5 March 2024. Poirier admitted under oath that on 4 March he had removed Sirco’s access under the mistaken impression that Sirco’s mandate had ended, and he accepted that this was an error, though he offered little explanation. However, the court emphasised that the injunction required the defendants to cooperate with Sirco but did not explicitly prohibit ever removing Sirco’s access during its mandate. The court reasoned that a refusal by Poirier to restore access once Sirco complained on 4 March would likely have constituted a breach of the cooperation obligation and an interference with justice. But in fact, as soon as Poirier was advised that Sirco’s mandate was ongoing, he instructed his IT provider to restore access, which occurred at 8:08 a.m. on 5 March. Sirco discovered the access loss at 2:54 p.m. on 4 March, so the interruption effectively delayed its work for only a few hours. Sirco’s investigator did not testify that the firm’s work had been meaningfully impeded. The burden was on MCMEL to establish that Poirier’s actions either actually obstructed the normal course of justice or created a serious risk of doing so. Given the brief delay, the prompt restoration, and the lack of concrete prejudice to Sirco’s mandate, the court held that MCMEL had not met this threshold and acquitted ALDG of counts 2A5 and 2A6.

Protocol violations and clarity of the orders
The remaining count (2A7) alleged that ALDG violated the protocol for review and destruction of the “Informations confidentielles subtilisées,” contrary to paragraph 7 of the Rogers order, by allowing Poirier and Hutchison to access seized documents on 4 March 2024 without the supervision of the independent counsel and Sirco. MCMEL argued that the protocol effectively barred any unsupervised consulting or manipulation of seized material by the defendants. The court examined paragraph 33(5) of the Lucas order, which the Rogers order had renewed. Although MCMEL read this provision as prohibitory, the court viewed it as permissive: it allowed defendants and their lawyers, where necessary, to examine seized material in the presence of the independent counsel and with Sirco’s assistance, but did not expressly forbid unsupervised access. That said, the judge acknowledged that the broader intent of the Anton Piller order and protocol was to deny defendants access to seized data while it was being processed by Sirco and the supervising lawyer, and that the idea of supervised access in paragraph 33(5) presupposed that the defendants otherwise had no copies of the seized material. However, since December 2023, Sirco itself had restored the defendants’ cloud access, and the supervising lawyer did not countermand this. In the court’s view, this “external circumstance”—the restored access—obscured the meaning of paragraph 33(5) and undercut the clarity of any supposed prohibition on direct access. Given that contempt requires proof of violation of a clear and unequivocal order, the court found that the orders, read in the actual operational environment created by Sirco’s decision, did not meet this standard. Accordingly, ALDG was acquitted on count 2A7 as well.

No insurance or policy wording issues
The judgment does not involve any insurance policy terms or contractual clauses of the kind typically seen in coverage disputes. The references to “protocols” and “ordonnances” relate to court-ordered procedures for handling seized evidence (Anton Piller and injunction protocols), not insurance or other written policies. As a result, there are no insurer obligations, exclusions, or policy clauses at issue to analyse in this case. The court’s legal reasoning instead focuses on civil procedure, evidence handling, and the law of contempt.

Outcome, successful parties, and monetary consequences
In the end, the Superior Court of Québec held that MCMEL had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that ALDG, Claude Poirier or France Hutchison had committed contempt of court. The court accepted that there were questionable decisions and a degree of carelessness, especially in temporarily blocking Sirco’s access and in the unsupervised handling of seized materials, and it acknowledged that these circumstances could understandably arouse suspicion. However, it considered that the case lay in a “grey zone” where the orders’ intent and their actual implementation did not cross the bright lines required for contempt. The court therefore acquitted ALDG, Poirier and Hutchison on all six remaining contempt counts (2A1, 2A5, 2A6, 2A7, 2B1 and 2C1). The successful parties in this decision are thus the defendants—ALDG, Claude Poirier and France Hutchison—who were awarded their legal costs (“frais de justice”) in the contempt proceeding. The judgment does not specify any exact monetary amount for these costs, nor does it award any damages or other quantified sums, and the total financial award in favour of the defendants therefore cannot be determined from this decision alone.