Case Report – Breadth of disclosure in criminal background checks unlawful

On October 5th, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that a police service unlawfully disclosed information about an individual’s withdrawn criminal charges in the course of conducting background checks.

The applicant, a social services worker, was charged with four counts of sexual assault and four counts of sexual exploitation. At trial, the charges were withdrawn and the applicant entered a peace bond. The applicant was later denied a license for a group home, denied employment and terminated from employment, assumingly based on information provided in criminal background checks. In response, he brought an application seeking an order to have information about the withdrawn charges expunged from police records.

The Court held that the police were authorized to collect and retain information about withdrawn charges and rejected the applicant’s (potentially disruptive) argument that retention of the records violated various Charter provisions. It did, however, hold that the applicant had not given his informed consent to disclosure. There was a dispute about whether the applicant actually signed any consents, but the Court held that the police service’s standard consent form was nonetheless insufficient to support disclosure of information about the withdrawn charges:

In this application, none of the relevant pieces of legislation were attacked and people unfamiliar with the legislation might be forgiven for being surprised at the breadth of information police services are authorized to maintain. I conclude, however, that the maintaining of information that charges have been laid, albeit subsequently withdrawn, is not in any way prohibited by legislation. On the other hand, I see nothing in any legislation which authorizes the release of information reporting that the subject of the inquiry was charged with sexual offences, which were subsequently withdrawn. The release form, which may or may not have been signed by Mr. Tadros, is not sufficiently specific in its terms to encompass this particular eventuality, and Mr. Tadros could be excused for assuming that at the time the application was made for the information, he had no record of any sort and need not be concerned about any adverse effect which might result on his employment prospects. There is a basic unfairness in the dissemination of this type of information as evidenced by the apparent effect it did have on his employment chances.

The breadth of information provided in Ontario criminal background checks has been the subject of significant criticism. For information on the policy-related significance of this judgement see “Criminal Background Checks – Balancing Public Safety, Security and Privacy” by John Swaigen.

Tadros v. Peel Regional Police Service, 2007 CanLII 41902 (ON S.C.).

Case report – Condonement means employer barred from investigating computer misuse

On September 24th the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia held that the University of British Columbia violated the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act by conducting a “reasonable grounds investigation” of an employee’s personal computer use.

The employee, an engineering technician, had a history of productivity problems. Although the University adduced evidence that it was managing the
employee’s performance, the complainant countered with evidence that he used his computer for non-work-related purposes openly and that and that the University tolerated this. The University’s acceptable use policy also allowed for “incidental personal use” within some restrictions.

The University decided to investigate the employee’s computer use after receiving a complaint about the his untimely service. It started by collecting the log file that listed websites visited. This showed a significant number of non-work-related websites, so the University then used software (spyware) to collect data that allowed it to identify the period of time the grievor spent on non-work-related sites. The spyware also captured screen shots in two minute intervals and, as a result, captured the employee’s personal correspondence, his bank account number and other information about his personal finances.

The adjudicator held that the University was not authorized to collect the log file, the more detailed information collected by the spyware and the screenshots. Her decision is significant for three reasons.

First, the adjudicator applied the contextual necessity test recently articulated by Commissioner Loukidelis in Order F07-10 (my report here). In this test, necessity is assessed in the entire context and in light of the privacy-protective purpose of the Act. In discussing this test, the adjudicator held that an employer must not necessarily exhaust all less intrusive means of meeting a legitimate objective to meet the necessity test, but that this is one factor to consider in the analysis.

Second, the adjudicator’s reason for finding that the collection of screen shots was violative rules out the collection of screen shots as an investigatory tool unless the content of the websites is the basis for the investigation – e.g. for pornography investigations. She said:

Information which reveals the complainant’s specific activities on non-work related websites is not, in this case, directly related to UBC’s human resources activities. As UBC notes, this is not a case involving an allegation that an employee accessed inappropriate material on the internet. The specifics of the complainant’s banking transactions, or his personal correspondence, are not relevant to any program or activity of UBC’s. The GESS Report, therefore, has some information that is relevant to managing the complainant’s employment, and some information which is not.

Third, in finding it was not necessary for the University to collect the log data and information about the amount of time the employee spent on non-work-related sites, the adjudicator relied heavily on the University’s permissive approach to personal use. In light of this approach, she held that the next necessary and reasonable step would have been to put the employee on notice of his misconduct rather than conduct surreptitious surveillance.

It is difficult to understand how the surreptitious collection of information about an employee’s internet use can be necessary in the absence of any attempt to question the employee about his activity, especially when the supervisor was aware of that activity and the complainant knew the supervisor was aware of it.

While it would be easy to frame this case as a message to employers about the harms of condoning personal use, there may be more to it than first meets the eye. This is because the foundations of workplace computer use are arguably changing. Not only are the internet applications used in day-to-day living more pervasive, the rise of “Web 2.0” is starting to blur the line between personal use and business use. One may also argue that employees in some sectors (especially professionals) are spending more and more of their waking day working. So can the reasonable employer afford to do anything but condone personal use? And what does this do to the idea, accepted widely in the existing case law, that an employee should have no expectation of privacy on a work computer system? This case may signal a next wave in workplace monitoring litigation in which some of these questions will be raised and answered.

University of British Columbia (Re), 2007 CanLII 42407 (BC I.P.C.).

One to watch – Drug testing case at Alberta CA

The Alberta Court of Appeal heard the Kellogg Brown & Root drug testing appeal on October 11th and has reserved judgement. The case will give Alberta’s highest court an important opportunity to consider the circumstances in which casual drug users are protected under human rights legislation based on the perceived disability doctrine. This has been an issue that has caused some uncertainty since the Ontario Court of Appeal’s landmark Entrop v. Imperial Oil judgement in 2000.

Kellogg Brown & Root is about an employee who was terminated 10 days into employment after a pre-employment drug test came back positive for cannabis. He was never impaired at work and testified that that he was only a casual marijuana user. In 2005, an Alberta Human Rights Panel dismissed the employee’s complaint because it was not based on any real or perceived disability and, alternatively, because the testing policy was not reasonably necessary.

In June 2006 the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench reviewed all of the case law on perceived disability and acknowledged that there is a “difference of opinion” over the right of casual drug users to protection from discrimination. In the end, it chose to adopt the approach taken in Entrop, which allows for a finding of prima facie discrimination based on the circumstances in which the relevant distinction is made. As in Entrop, the Court held that the complainant was treated as if he was drug dependent and likely to report to work impaired. Recall that the policy in Entrop explicitly stated, “In the cycle of substance abuse, users frequently experimenting with drugs progress to the dependent user state later on.” The Court held that this approach to casual users could be implied in any zero tolerance policy and (criticizing a significant Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision called Milazzo) held that an employer cannot defend against a discrimination claim by proving a subjective belief that the complainant was a casual user.

The Court then held that pre-employment testing was not reasonably necessary to satisfying the objective of “prohibiting workplace impairment.” Its reasoning is summarized in the following sentence: “While there is a rational connection between impairment and job performance, the link between a positive pre-employment urine test and workplace impairment is tenuous and uses predictions based on statistical risk to bar particular people.” More significantly, the Court suggested a number of ways by which the employer could have built a standard which was more accommodative and better connected to the goal of prohibiting (by predicting) workplace impairment.

Incidentally, and implicitly recognizing that the prima facie discrimination analysis in drug testing cases is tortuous, the Court commented that its okay that human rights legislation may be doing “the work of privacy rights.” Since Alberta employers are subject to employment privacy legislation (the Alberta Personal Information Protection Act) and since Oil Sands employers are clearly applying strict drug testing policies, we might expect a statement on drug testing from the Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner in the near future. In fact, a PIPA complaint was filed against Kellogg Brown & Root that was recently dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. Until the Privacy Commissioner gets his chance to speak, the Kellogg Brown & Root Alberta Court of Appeal case is the one to watch.

Case Report – Duty to mitigate weighs against preservation of evidence

In this October 5th Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision, Patillo J. held that a party’s duty to mitigate loss weighed against its duty to preserve relevant evidence.

The case is about damage to high-priced Persian carpets caused while they were under the defendant’s carriage. The defendant made two claims of spoliation, both of which were rejected.

First, the defendant asked that an adverse inference be drawn because the plaintiff could not produce records of similar carpet purchases. Patillo J. disagreed with the defendant’s assertion that the missing records would have been evidence of the value of the carpets that were damaged and rejected its request.

The defendant also claimed that evidence of damage to the carpets was unavailable because the plaintiff sold the carpets shortly after it delivered them into the plaintiff’s possession. Patillo J. held that the dispute was live when the carpets were still in the defendant’s possession. Moreover, he held that the plaintiff was blameless for selling the carpets because it had a duty to mitigate and put the defendant on notice of its mitigation plans:

In my view the presumption does not arise in this case in respect of the carpets. KLM submits that the issue of discoloration and whether the damage to the carpets was irreparable only arose in December 2000. In my view it was clear that the issue of damage to the carpets was one that had been in existence from the time that the carpets were returned by the US Customs Authority in April 2000. Following their return, KLM had the carpets in its possession for many months before World of Art reclaimed them. It retained Mr. Mekhael, its carpet expert, in April 2000 for the express purpose of determining the extent of the damage to the carpets. He looked at the carpets on at least two occasions before December 2000. He had ample time to inspect the carpets and document their condition.

Mr. Ziai testified that he thought Mr. Mekhael wanted to put chemicals on the carpet to test it and that is why he refused permission for testing on December 1, 2000. On December 2 and 3, 2000, after Mr. Mekhael had been refused permission to test a carpet, the carpets were put on public auction by World of Art. KLM’s lawyers were present at the auction. There was nothing to prevent KLM from buying a carpet if it felt it was necessary. The offer to purchase it made on December 8, 2000, was not firm in that it contained no specific price. In any event, if testing of the carpets was so important to KLM, it still had time to move in the Action for an order to preserve property and/or to test. World of Art and Mr. Ziai were proceeding to mitigate World of Art’s damages by selling the carpets. KLM knew that but took no steps to secure a carpet for testing beyond its general offer to purchase. In the circumstances, I am hard pressed to understand how the presumption in respect of spoliation arises.

Ziai v. Maatschappij (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines), 2007 CanLII 41896 (ON S.C.).

It really is all about information

I reported on the substance Supreme Court of Canada’s Vancouver Sun decision from last Thursday here, but also have to say how much I liked Bastarache J.’s opening line:

Information is at the heart of any legal system. Police investigate crimes and act on the information they acquire; lawyers and witnesses present information to courts; juries and judges make decisions based on that information; and those decisions, reported by the popular and legal press, make up the basis of the law in future cases.

Right on! Now all this blog needs is a theme song.

Case Report – SCC says informer privilege absolute

In a judgment released October 11th, the Supreme Court of Canada weighed the interest protected by the informer privilege against the interest in open courts. An 8 – 1 majority held that informer privilege is an absolute bar on the disclosure of an informer’s identity subject only to the innocence at stake exception.

The majority strongly affirmed the mandatory character of the informer privilege. Writing for the majority, Bastarache J. said:

The informer privilege rule is mandatory (subject only to the “innocence at stake” exception). To permit trial judges wide discretion in determining whether to protect informer privilege would undermine the purposes of the rule. Part of the rationale for a mandatory informer privilege rule is that it encourages would-be informers to come forward and report on crimes, safe in the knowledge that their identity will be protected. A rule that gave trial judges the power to decide on an ad hoc basis whether to protect informer privilege would create a significant disincentive for would-be informers to come forward, thereby eviscerating the usefulness of informer privilege and dealing a great blow to police investigations.

Despite this forceful position, the majority did leave open the possibility that the rule might be the subject of a Charter challenge. It was disinclined, however, to embark on a constitutional analysis in the circumstances because the appeal was of a discretionary order.

The core of the majority judgement is directed at how the judiciary should operationalize the privilege, for even though the privilege must always be respected it is clear that a judge also has a duty to apply it in a manner that minimally impairs the open court principle. The majority recognized that meeting this duty can be challenging for judges because the parties will frequently consent to an in camera process.

In recommending a model process to assist judges in meeting this challenge, the majority held that:

a judge can appoint an amicus curiae for the limited purpose of addressing whether the evidence supports the conclusion that a person is a confidential informer
the media does not have standing to address this question
the media may have standing after the privilege has been established in a second hearing to address the issue of minimal intrusion
members of the media should be provided with notice rather than be hand picked
whether notice to the media is given is a matter of the judge’s discretion
the media should not be provided with identifying information and, more generally, should only be provided with information essential to making an argument

LeBel J. was the lone dissenter. Unlike the majority he framed the contest as between a constitutionally-protected principle (open courts) and a judge made rule that promotes the administration of justice (the informer privilege). He held that an absolute rule was not warranted because the privilege is not an end in and of itself. He also suggested that the majority should have embarked upon a constitutional analysis even though a Charter challenge to the common law rule was not formally made. Given the qualifier made by the majority, LeBel J. may some day get another chance to make his point.

Named Person v. Vancouver Sun, 2007 SCC 43.

One to watch – Blood Tribe at the SCC

The Supreme Court of Canada is scheduled to hear an appeal of Blood Tribe Department of Health v. Canada (Privacy Commissioner) on February 21, 2008. The case will present an opportunity for the Court to comment on a principle it first articulated in 1982 in Descoteaux v. Mierzwinski – that laws authorizing interference with solicitor-client privilege must be interpreted restrictively. Of perhaps greater interest, it will be the Court’s first opportunity to provide significant commentary on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

The dispute arose when the respondent to a complaint alleging a failure to provide access to personal information refused to produce records of communications that it claimed to be subject to solicitor-client privilege. In demanding the records be produced, the Commissioner relied on the investigatory powers granted by section 12 of PIPEDA, a broadly-worded provision which does not expressly grant the power to order the production of records over which solicitor-client privilege is claimed.

Litigation ensued and the Federal Court held that the Commissioner had the power to order production. It did so by applying a purposive analysis, stressing the Commissioner’s “central role in achieving the important objectives of the legislative scheme.”

The Federal Court of Appeal disagreed with the lower court’s approach, which it found to be inconsistent with the Mierzwinski strict interpretation principle and the concept of solicitor-client privilege as a substantive rule of law. It stated:

In short, the reason express language is required to abrogate solicitor‑client privilege is because it is presumptively inviolate. The exception for solicitor‑client privilege in the PIPEDA is not what shelters privileged documents from disclosure. The law of privilege does that. The exception simply recognizes that privilege.

There are some finer points to the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision that may also catch the Supreme Court’s interest, including (1) whether the principles developed in interpreting the federal Privacy Act should be applied in interpreting PIPEDA and (2) what effect should be given to language authorizing the exercise of powers “to the same manner and to the same extent as a superior court.”

Blood Tribe is likely to remain relevant given that Parliament’s Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics made a rather moderate recommendation in its recent Statutory Review of the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act. Asked by the Privacy Commissioner to address the gap to her investigatory powers identified by the Federal Court of Appeal in Blood Tribe, the Standing Committee only recommended that PIPEDA be amended to expressly permit her to apply to the Federal Court for an expedited review of solicitor-client privilege claims.

Case Report – IPC asserts jurisdiction to scrutinize exclusion claim

In the first case to consider the new exclusion for research-related records in the Ontario Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, the IPC held that it has jurisdiction to order production of records claimed to be excluded and otherwise inquire into the claim. The University had resisted production of records in four requests where the research-related nature of the records was clear on the face of the requests.

Interim Order PO-2601-I, 2007 CanLII 39194 (ON I.P.C.).

Case Report – Investigator to suspect duty of care recognized by SCC

On October 4th, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court of Canada held that an investigating police officer owes a private law duty of care to the suspect under investigation. This is a duty of care case and not directly about information and privacy. There are, however, a couple of points of significance to readers of this blog.

First, investigations obviously involve the collection of personal information, and the new duty will inform such collections. Unlike section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which only operates to restrict the collection of information, the new duty could conceivably require its collection. In fact, in this case one of the allegations was that the police breached their duty of care by failing to re-investigate after receiving exculpatory evidence after charges were laid. Based on the majority’s reasoning, there is no reason why a private investigator or a member of a company’s audit or security staff would not be found to be subject to an analogous duty quite apart from any factors related to the underlying relationship between the investigator’s principal and her suspect.

Second, this is the first time the Supreme Court of Canada has commented on the important Jane Doe duty to warn case, which was relied upon by the majority (of five judges) at the Court of Appeal in recognizing the new duty. Writing for the majority of the Supreme Court, McLachlin C.J.C. said that Jane Doe was not analogous and noted that there is significant debate over the content and the scope of its ratio. For the minority, Charron J., went further and explained:

Hence, the trial judge in Jane Doe held that where the police are aware of a specific threat to a specific group of individuals, the police have a duty to inform those individuals of the specific threat in question so that they may take steps to protect themselves from harm. As Moldaver J. (as he then was) said, speaking for the Divisional Court in confirming that the action could proceed to trial, “[w]hile the police owe certain duties to the public at large, they cannot be expected to owe a private law duty of care to every member of society who might be at risk”: Jane Doe v. Metropolitan Toronto (Municipality) Commissioners of Police (1990), 72 D.L.R. (4th) 580, at p. 584. Hence, Jane Doe cannot be read to stand for the wide proposition that the police owe a general duty of care to all potential victims of crime. Such an interpretation would ignore the fact that there must be more than mere foreseeability of harm before a duty of care will arise; there must also be sufficient proximity between the parties and the absence of policy considerations negating the existence of any prima facie duty of care.

Hill v. Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police, 2007 SCC 41.

Case Report – Pornographic images to be preserved but not produced

On October 2nd, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered a plaintiff in a harassment suit to preserve six pornographic images portraying homosexual acts and allow one of the defendant’s lawyers to inspect the images.

Magistrate Judge Facciola accepted that the images were relevant to the defendant’s claim that the alleged harassment was “unwelcome.” (The test for harassment under Canadian law also includes a subjective component.) In the his view, however, relevance alone did not justify production because of the plaintiff’s competing privacy interest and because the images would not clearly be admissible at trial. In response to the defendant’s argument that a party to litigation is entitled to the production of evidence that is “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” Magistrate Judge Facciola held that the defendant’s purpose for seeking the images (which was to admit them as evidence of the plaintiff’s own standard of behaviour) meant that the issue of discoverability and the issue of admissibility were inseparable.

Smith v. Cafe Asia (2 October 2007, Dist. Ct. D.C.).