B.C. court refuses HVAC company's non-solicitation injunction
A Vancouver HVAC company accused a former manager of improperly using confidential information and poaching clients to launch a rival firm. The court found little evidence to back it up.
In a ruling released July 17, 2026, Justice Whately of the Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed most of the injunction Somatic HVAC Solutions Ltd. sought against a former team leader and Stride HVAC Ltd., the company he co-founded.
The court ordered him to return retained screenshots, but declined to stop him from bidding on work or contacting clients pending trial.
The former manager worked for the Vancouver-area company for more than a decade, rising from a technical sales role to team leader of its service department, supervising 20 to 25 employees and earning between $170,000 and $200,000 a year.
He resigned in February 2026, telling the company's president he was constructively dismissed over unpaid commissions, estimated at roughly $71,000.
His 2013 employment agreement, amended in 2017, included a 12-month non-solicitation clause and confidentiality obligations covering client, pricing and other business information. Before resigning, he took three screenshots from the company's project software to support his commission dispute; the company said the images also captured payroll and project data.
Ten days later, he incorporated a new HVAC company with a business partner who...
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