The court date for the egg-industry lawsuits has been postponed from July 19 and Donald Good, lawyer for one of the litigants, said it may not take place until October.
The court was to hear Good’s application to combine three lawsuits – against L.H. Gray & Son Ltd., Burnbrae Farms Ltd. and the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board.
There was also a possibility that the lawyers would have an agreement to present to Justice Peter Louwers on a process to decide which documents obtained from a whistleblower can be allowed into the case as evidence.
There are some documents among about a million electronic files that are private and confidential financial information not related to the lawsuits.
Good says in an e-mail that negotiations for this type of agreement on a process are “under consideration,” as are out-of-court settlements.
Svante Linde\ of Best Choice Eggs at Blackstock alleges that the two egg-grading companies conspired with help from the egg board to drive him out of business. He has, in fact, recently sold his egg-grading business.
The whistleblower, Norman Bourdeau of London, turned over the electronic documents which the court now has under its protection. Bourdeau claims Bill Gray ordered him to destroy the records, so the court has said it’s not prepared to turn them back over to Gray.
There are excerpts, plus some of Bourdeau’s allegations, in court documents at both London and Oshawa that indicate that Gray manipulated automatic grading equipment to put cracks into cartons that should only contain Grade A eggs and there are e-mails among Gray, staff at Burnbrae and Harry Pelissero, general manager of the egg board, that indicate they worked together to thwart Linde when he couldn’t buy enough eggs and applied to the federal government for permission to import from the United States.
Linde complained when the eggs that Pelissero obtained from Gray and Burnbrae failed to meet Canadian Food Inspection Agency standards.
He also complained when Pelissero used grading data, largely reflecting operations at Gray and Burnbrae, to accuse Linde of rejecting Grade A eggs to reduce the money he owed the egg board and farmers. The allegation in the lawsuits is that the data from Gray and Burnbrae was wrong, not the grading at Lind’s Best Choice Eggs.
Gray has responded to the allegations by claiming to have done nothing wrong.
