I have come across a court file involving Macartneys of Ottawa, an egg grading business and at one time an importer-distributor of Easy Eggs for a U.S. manufacturer.
The court documents indicate the relationship between Macartneys and its supplier deteriorated and that James Macartney approached Joe Hudson of Burnbrae Farms to do a deal so Burnbrae could supply his Easy Egg customers with Burnbrae's liquid egg products.
Hudson, in return, offered to hand the Giant Tiger table-market egg business to Macartney. The court documents indicate Joe Hudson offered to phone Macartney whenever the Giant Tiger account came up for competitive bidding, find out what Macartney would bid, and then agree to quote a higher price.
That was for a two-year period for sales of $2 million. The deal between Macartney and Hudson was for five years.
In return, Burnbrae was to get the Marriott and Fairmont hotels account and Compass, but he would have to compete with Trilogy for those accounts. Trilogy was a joint venture of the Manitoba Egg Producers Marketing Board, Michael Foods Inc. and Inovatech to make the Easy Egg product in Canada.
Burnbrae also got Macartney's salesman, Gordon Dowd, and all his client information.
