The Limits of What Is “Reasonably Necessary”: BC Supreme Court Refuses Broad Injunctive Relief in Post‑Employment Competition Dispute
January 23, 2026
BY Marie Ong
In AFX Mixing & Pumping Technologies Inc. v. McKinon, 2025 BCSC 2573, the British Columbia Supreme Court dismissed an application for a second interlocutory injunction that would have barred a former managing director from doing business with his former employer’s clients until trial.
The plaintiff company, AFX Mixing & Pumping Technologies Inc. (“AFX”), sells and distributes industrial mixing and pumping equipment. From AFX’s incorporation in 2014, the defendant Shaune McKinon served as managing director and was a minority shareholder. His employment ended in March 2025, and he was removed as a director in April 2025. Other defendants in this matter are family members, each of whom worked for AFX at different times.
Following Mr. McKinon’s departure, AFX discovered that he had signed a services agreement with Mixtec, a global competitor of AFX. This agreement was signed in March 2025, while Mr. McKinon was still a director of AFX.
AFX alleged that Mr. McKinon covertly aligned himself with Mixtec while still a fiduciary, took confidential customer information from AFX and was competing against AFX in breach of his fiduciary duties. AFX’s allegations are that this conduct not only breached contractual obligations but also the fiduciary duties inherent in Mr. McKinon’s senior leadership role.
In August 2025, the BC Supreme Court had granted AFX an interlocutory injunction restraining the defendants from possessing or using specific categories of AFX data and requiring the return of confidential information (this decision can be found at 2025 BCSC 1717). The granting of that order was based on a strong initial case that the defendants had possession of confidential business information which threatened irreparable market harm.
With this application, AFX had returned to court seeking a further, broader injunction restraining the defendants from contacting or doing business with any AFX clients in North America until trial. AFX argued this second injunction was justified given Mr. McKinon’s patterns of concealment and that Mr. McKinon was likely suppressing additional inculpatory evidence including ongoing misuse of confidential business information.
The defendants opposed the injunction, arguing Mr. McKinon was no longer an AFX fiduciary, that AFX had not shown risk of irreparable harm, and that the injunction would cause greater harm to the defendants and third parties than any potential harm to AFX.
The court accepted that there was “strong initial evidence of a pattern of ongoing concealment”, including with respect to the defendants’ affidavits and document production (para. 67). The court also agreed that these breaches of duty and concealment created concerns of ongoing non-disclosure and misuse of confidential information. Despite these findings, the court found that AFX did not have a strong case that Mr. McKinon’s fiduciary duty of non-competition would continue until trial in April 2027. Nearly nine months had passed since Mr. McKinon had ceased being a director, and the court emphasized that a fiduciary duty of non-competition will not typically be extended for more than 12 months after departure, even for a key executive. On this point, the court cited the BC Court of Appeal decision of TCT Logistics Inc. v Nordeen, 1999 BCCA 597, which states that:
[27] … courts ought to be careful to limit the grant of equitable relief to that reasonably necessary to protect the interests threatened. In such circumstances, I believe that generally any injunctive relief should be time limited, perhaps with liberty to the moving party to seek to extend the duration of any such relief granted. Each case will, of course, fall to be decided on its particular circumstances but generally, save in exceptional circumstances, I doubt if it would be easy to persuade a court to initially grant an order extending this sort of equitable relief beyond approximately one year from the date of termination of employment and in many cases, a shorter period may be deemed adequate.
[Emphasis added]
The court also rejected the plaintiff’s argument that ongoing misuse of confidential information justified the injunction. The earlier injunction already prohibited possession or use of AFX confidential information, and the evidence of potential misuse was “too dated and circumstantial” to justify the relief sought (at para. 9).
In weighing the balance of potential harm, the court noted that the proposed injunction would significantly impair the defendants’ ability to work in a specialized industry, while AFX had had time to solidify client and market relationships following Mr. McKinon’s departure. The court also considered the impact to third parties, noting that customers would benefit from having an additional supplier in the market.
The application for a second injunction was therefore dismissed. The court ordered limited additional document production but held that costs should be in the cause, noting that the evidence of fiduciary breaches and concealment justified AFX bringing the application.
