A B.C. Provincial Court judge has ordered Daily Hive’s parent company to pay former contributor Bartosz Bos $1,000 for delay of court for “coming unprepared for trial” at a hearing on January 14.
Bos’s small-claims suit against Buzz Connected Media was set for a two-day trial this month but has now been rescheduled to July after the judge granted the company’s application to adjourn.
In an email to Canadaland, Bos says company co-founder Manny Bahia did not show up to court and that the company’s lawyer “repeatedly” requested recesses in order to get Bahia on the phone to testify.
“By the time Bahia was ready to go on the phone, 90 minutes of the court’s time had elapsed, and the judge revoked the lawyer’s application for Bahia to testify by phone and granted me $1,000 for my expenses,” Bos states in the email.
Buzz Connected’s lawyer, Rebecca Sim with Cassels Brock in Vancouver, did not respond to a request for comment about the hearing.
Bos, however, suffered a partial defeat when his bid to amend his claim for alleged copyright violations was denied. He says he could take such a claim to the B.C. Supreme Court instead, but that would be “far more expensive for Daily Hive (and ultimately me) to deal with.”
Bos, who wrote for Daily Hive predecessor Vancity Buzz under the pseudonym “Hipster Designer,” originally filed his action in September 2018, alleging he was owed more than $18,000 for work done in 2013. He claimed he had undertaken unpaid writing work for the startup on the understanding that he would be compensated later, as the company grew.
The company initially failed to respond to the lawsuit, and Bos was awarded a default judgment. In an affidavit, Bahia claimed he had been “preparing for a trip to Europe” at the time.
The trial has been rescheduled for July 30-31, 2020.
Top image from Daily Hive via Wikimedia Commons.
