Why an Oakville Contractor Chose Not to Seek an Injunction

The situation

Jae-won worked full-time as a hotel front-desk supervisor and ran a small fencing and deck-building business on the side, mostly weekends and evenings. His spouse, Eun-ji, drove long-haul routes during the week and handled the business's books and scheduling when she was home. It was a two-person operation with one part-time addition: Miriam, who they had brought on to coordinate quotes, follow up with leads, and manage the calendar during their busiest season.

Miriam had access to a shared spreadsheet listing every past and prospective client, along with notes on what each one had been quoted, when their project was likely to happen, and what had made them hesitate. It was, in effect, the business's entire pipeline. When Miriam left after a disagreement over her hours, she took a copy of that spreadsheet with her.

Within two weeks, Jae-won started hearing from clients who mentioned being contacted by someone offering a similar service at a lower price. One recognized the exact wording of a quote Jae-won had prepared months earlier. It became clear Miriam was using the spreadsheet to solicit the same people, working through the list systematically.

The legal problem

Jae-won's instinct was to go to court immediately and ask a judge to order Miriam to stop contacting his clients. That kind of order is called an interlocutory injunction — a court order made before a full trial, requiring a party to do or stop doing something while the underlying dispute is still being resolved. Injunctions can be granted quickly, sometimes within days, which made the idea appealing given that Miriam was actively working through the client list while every week passed.

What Jae-won had not been told, and what our team explained before filing anything, is that a party asking for an interlocutory injunction is almost always required to give what is called an undertaking as to damages. This is a formal promise to the court that if the injunction turns out, at the end of the case, to have been wrongly granted, the party who obtained it will compensate the other side for any losses the order caused them in the meantime. It exists because an injunction can seriously damage someone's ability to earn a living before a judge has heard the full evidence, and the person asking for that power has to accept the financial risk that comes with it.

In Miriam's case, an injunction stopping her from contacting anyone on the list would have effectively shut down whatever new venture she was running, before either side's evidence had been tested. If Jae-won's claim later proved weaker than it looked — for example, if some of those client relationships turned out not to be confidential business information at all, or if Miriam could show she had built new relationships independently — he could be on the hook for her lost income during the period the injunction was in force. Given that the dispute involved client relationships worth somewhere in the range of $60,000 to Jae-won's business, and given the cost and uncertainty of injunction motions generally, that was a real risk, not a theoretical one.

There was a second, quieter problem. Courts expect injunction applicants to move with real urgency. Jae-won had first noticed the pattern nearly three weeks before contacting our team, which weakened the argument that irreparable harm was imminent enough to justify an emergency order. A judge would reasonably ask why, if the harm was so pressing, he had waited.

What we did

1. Assessed the injunction on its merits before filing anything. We reviewed what made the client list confidential, what Miriam's employment terms actually said about it, and what evidence existed that she had used it rather than built her own contacts independently. The case for an injunction was plausible but not strong enough to justify the financial exposure of the undertaking as to damages against a defendant who, on the information available, had limited ability to pay if the roles were reversed.
2. Weighed the cost of urgency against the cost of a considered claim. An emergency motion would have required affidavit evidence assembled within days, at real expense, with no guarantee of success and a standing risk of liability if it later unwound. We laid out that comparison plainly for Jae-won: the injunction bought speed, but the ordinary claim bought certainty about what he was exposed to.
3. Sent a detailed demand letter first. Before commencing any court process, we wrote to Miriam setting out the basis for a breach of confidence claim, itemizing the client contacts believed to have been solicited using the spreadsheet, and requesting that she stop and account for any business obtained through it. Demand letters cost little and sometimes resolve a dispute outright; here, it stopped the outreach to at least some of the remaining clients on the list, even though it did not resolve the claim.
4. Commenced a claim for damages rather than an injunction. Because the amount in issue exceeded the province's small claims monetary limit, we proceeded in the Superior Court under the simplified procedure, a streamlined track for claims of this size that limits the scope of pre-trial steps and keeps costs more proportionate to what is at stake. The claim sought damages for breach of confidence and, in the alternative, unjust enrichment, based on the business Miriam was found to have diverted using the list.
5. Built the evidentiary record methodically. Rather than rushing sworn evidence together for a motion, we had time to gather the specific quotes with matching language, statements from two clients confirming they had been contacted using details only in the spreadsheet, and Miriam's own employment correspondence describing the spreadsheet as confidential. That record was considerably stronger than what an emergency affidavit, prepared in days, could have produced.
6. Negotiated from a position supported by evidence. Once Miriam's counsel saw the record assembled, settlement discussions became realistic. We used the strength of the paper trail, not the threat of an injunction, as the lever.

The outcome

The claim settled roughly eight months after it was filed, before trial but after examinations for discovery had made each side's evidentiary strengths and weaknesses clear. Miriam agreed to pay Jae-won about $38,000 — covering roughly the value of the business diverted from clients who could be specifically identified, but well short of the full $60,000 Jae-won believed the list was worth, since several of the disputed clients could not be tied conclusively to the spreadsheet rather than word of mouth.

That gap is the honest part of this story. Jae-won did not recover everything he lost, and he spent months in a claim he would have preferred to avoid entirely. But the loss was contained. He never had to post the financial exposure that an unsuccessful injunction motion could have created, he was not left owing Miriam anything, and the amount he did recover meaningfully offset what the departure had cost his business. Choosing not to chase the fast, dramatic remedy, in favour of the slower one with less downside, was the decision that limited the damage.

Jae-won and Eun-ji also came out of the process with a clearer business practice: new hires now sign a short written confidentiality and non-solicitation acknowledgment before they are given access to client information, and the client spreadsheet itself is now shared on a more limited basis. Neither would have prevented Miriam from leaving, but both would have made the case for compensation faster and stronger if it happened again.

What you can learn from this