More than 360 people who worked at a federal prison in Kingston, Ontario, will get at least $1,000 each after a precedent setting six-year legal fight over a breach of their privacy. “This has been a long odyssey,” Christopher Edwards, the Kingston lawyer who represented staff in a lawsuit, said Wednesday.
Joyceville Institution is a medium-security federal prison in Kingston, Ontario
Corrections Canada has agreed to the payments to 366 people whose names appeared on a staff list at Joyceville Institution. The list, which included home addresses, home phone numbers, and the names of spouses, fell into the hands of convicts at the prison in 2003.
This week, a Superior Court judge in Kingston endorsed the deal that puts an end to the class-action lawsuit launched in 2004 by staff. It originally sought $15 million in damages in a novel area of law where there have been only a handful of cases in Canada.
In addition to the tax-free $1,000 payments, staff and their spouses who can establish they suffered serious psychological harm can seek bigger payments.
“Those people can make a claim and receive up to $10,000,” Edwards said. He said he doesn’t know how many people will seek the additional payments.
Corrections also has to pay the legal bills of the plaintiffs, which will total more than $140,000, but it does not admit liability.
“It is titled a compromise payment,” Edwards said. “They were very careful to negotiate it on that basis; there is no admission that there was a breach of privacy or that damages were warranted.”
The confidential document that fell into the hands of inmates was dated 2001 and was a list of guards, parole officers and clerks who worked at the facility.
The federal privacy commissioner ruled, following an investigation, that the privacy of staff on the list had been breached.
The breach sparked fear that inmates could use the list to target staff. Workers cited concern that organized crime members might seek to harass or intimidate families or the information could be used to blackmail prison workers.
Joyceville is a medium-security prison that houses more than 400 inmates, including convicted killers and gang members. It is known for an active, illicit drug trade and violence often sparked by racial tensions.
Corrections also has agreed to review privacy protection at 11 other federal facilities in Ontario, including every prison in Kingston.
“Once that review and recommendations are done, they’re going to be providing the results to Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Privacy Commissioner … will be commenting on those reviews,” Edwards said. “You can imagine the harm that could be done if an inmate decided to act on that information.”
The leak was discovered in 2003 when one inmate was found with the list, with names of some staff highlighted. It’s believed he was trying to sell the list to the highest bidder among fellow prisoners.
The convict apparently got the document after a flood at the prison.
“They believe what happened is somebody enlisted the help of inmates to carry out filing cabinets in the financial offices and the best guess is … that one of the inmates grabbed it,” Edwards said.
Corrections had argued that inmates could always get the information by other means.
“Certainly this is, from a facts scenario, very much a precedent setting case, although remember it is a settlement, it is not a judgment of the court on liability so it leaves open the question as to whether or not the courts will award damages for breach of privacy on these types of facts and what … the monetary value of that is,” the lawyer said.
He said he was happy with the deal and had recommended to his clients, given the uncertainty of taking the case to trial.
“I think at the end of the day, people received nominal damages because that is what they likely would have receive [after trial],” he said. “We don’t know what the outcome would have been but I think it was a good compromise.”
Corrections officials could not be reached for comment.
This also appears today in The Kingston Whig-Standard
Here’s the court document filed this week in Kingston, setting out the terms of the deal between Corrections and the staff who sued:
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