The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) must pay monetary damages to a client for the disclosure by one of its employees of the client’s account information, the Federal Court of Canada has ruled.
The client, Nicole Landry, was going through divorce proceedings. As part of the proceedings, Landry’s husband’s lawyer sent a subpoena to RBC ordering a bank employee to attend court with information on Landry’s accounts. The employee also faxed account statements to the husband’s lawyer without Landry’s consent. This was a violation of RBC’s own policies, which required the consent of an account holder before releasing information. The faxing of the documents directly to the husband’s lawyer was also a violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), as it was outside the scope of the subpoena, which requested the documents for court records.
Read more on Canadian Employment Law Today.