In my Amended Pleadings in Drummond v. Rogers Wireless Inc (SC-05-24969-00) I made out an argument that Rogers should also be liable to me for punitive damages.
Part of a claim for punitive damages involves establishing that the Defendant attempted to force the Plaintiff to make and unfair settlement.
Here is the argument I raised for that claim:
Rogers’ Behavior was Designed to Force Me to Make an Unfair Settlement
113. Rogers regularly “upped the ante” on the financial burdens they were bringing to bear on me by exposing my credit rating to an unfavorable discrediting and by charging me 2% interest, compounded monthly (26.82% per year) in “late penalties” that alone totaled more than $200 per month (and growing).
114. Rogers sent my account for collection “treatment” 16 days prior to my invoice being due.
115. Rogers shut off my then-11 year old child’s cell phone 8 days before my invoice was due because I was not making a “promise to pay” over $14,000 on my upcoming invoice, four days before he was to get on the Toronto Subway on his own for the first time in his life.
116. Rogers repeatedly refused to honour its contractual commitment holding the consumer responsible for “undisputed” (as opposed to “total”) charges by refusing to facilitate a disaggregation of disputed from undisputed charges that would have made it remotely easy for me to keep my account in good standing.
117. Apart from the substantial late penalty Rogers levies on “unpaid” charges, Rogers would have levied a $200 Early Termination Fee (for EACH phone) on the remaining term of my wireless contract as well as the cost of one month’s notice for contract cancellation if I wanted to bring my relationship with Rogers to an end: a penalty to me of $475 in total for a parting of our ways.
118. Rogers repeatedly insisted that I owed a total of over $14,000 on the monthly invoices it sent out.
119. Rogers made an Offer of Settlement on October 14, 2005 (Exhibit X) that purported to be the “goodwill gesture” of Rogers accepting a “considerably reduced settlement of $2,000.00 (payable by [me] to Rogers)” for Rogers to “write off the balance on [my] Account” and also thereby settle this claim in Small Claims Court.
120. The options presented to me by Rogers were: to eventually pay a rapidly and regularly growing bill of over $14,000.00; to immediately settle for paying $2,000.00; or to fight a legal and advocacy battle with Rogers over charges that Mr. Rogers, on behalf of Rogers Wireless, has fully acknowledged were wrongfully attributed to me; a fight that would consume extraordinary amounts of my time and energy, irretrievably impinging on time allotted to an intense research agenda laid out for my sabbatical year.
121. My choices were all grimly narrow.
122. All of these factors conjoined amount to conduct designed to force me to make an unfair settlement.