Injunctions and Emergency Orders

The civil litigation process in Canada provides powerful pre-trial remedies to combat fraud and protect your property, your good name and your data. These court orders can also aid in circumstances involving infringement of intellectual property rights, and situations where the preservation of evidence and assets is crucial.

Billington Barristers has a wealth of experience acting on behalf of plaintiffs, defendants and as court-appointed Independent Supervising Solicitor. Rick Billington, QC has nationally recognized expertise in obtaining and defending applications for injunctive relief and other “extraordinary remedies” including:

• Injunctions – emergency orders to prevent imminent irreparable harm or to force compliance with legal obligations.
• Anton Piller Orders – used to secure entry to businesses, residences or other places to preserve evidence (including electronic evidence) when there is a risk that it may be destroyed.
• Mareva Injunctions – used to ensure that assets remain in the jurisdiction of the court and are not destroyed or wasted.
• Norwich Pharmacal Orders – used to ensure that evidence in the hands of third parties (particularly banks or internet service providers) will be preserved and turned over to the Plaintiff for use in litigation.

We have utilized these remedies against sophisticated businesses involved in software piracy, to protect against the removal of assets from the province, to investigate and halt internet defamation by wrongdoers hiding behind pseudonyms. Rick Billington has successfully acted for defendants who were wrongfully accused of breaching trade secrets or non-competition agreements, and who were the targets of Anton Piller Orders and other injunctions.

Independent Supervising Solicitor - Canadian law has required that law firms acting for Plaintiffs in Anton Piller Orders must employ the services of an Independent Supervising Solicitor, to act as a neutral officer of the court to explain the court’s order to the defendant, to supervise the search for and seizure of evidence from the defendant, to objectively report to the court and to aid the court and counsel for all parties in technical matters. Rick Billington has been appointed as Independent Supervising Solicitor by both the Federal Court and the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta. He has acted in that capacity in a copyright violation action where an Anton Piller Order resulted in the seizure of over 9 terabytes of computer data from a software developer, and in another action in which an employee stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash from his employer. He was recently appointed by the Ontario Court of Justice to serve as an advisor to a law firm acting as Independent Supervising Solicitor in a major ongoing case involving an alleged misappropriation of confidential information.