A Vancouver Island contractor has been ordered to pay back more than $100,000 he billed a community non-profit agency that he used for personal expenses, including a cross-Canada trip, motorsports and visits to restaurants, pubs, and liquor and cannabis retailers.
Christopher Patrick Whittle, who did business under names including Trend Contracting Co. and Trend Painting Co., was hired by the Cowichan Green Community Society for consulting, contracting and construction services on a food hub the society was building to improve food security in the Duncan area.
The society funded the community project by securing more than $1 million in government grants.
Whittle submitted invoices to the society in the amount of $100,800, then transferred the money out of a business account for a corporation he controlled.
Whittle “used the deposit money to pay for personal expenses, including a cross-Canada trip, surf lodges, motorsports, pet supplies, vaporizers, restaurants, pubs and liquor and cannabis purchases,” according to a ruling on damages posted by the B.C. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The society sought the return of that money along with punitive damages on the basis of breach of trust and “unjust enrichment.”
The civil action was filed in May 2023, before it was learned that Whittle had spent the deposits. A response was filed by Whittle and other defendants two months later, and a judge issued a freezing order against them in December.
In defiance of that order, Whittle listed over $47,000 in assets for sale on Facebook Marketplace in January and February 2024. Another judge ordered that the response to the civil claim be struck because Whittle had flouted the freezing order.
Whittle did not retain counsel and a default judgment was issued against him in April before damages were assessed last month.
The judge ordered Whittle to pay $100,800 plus over $6,000 in interest, along with $21,600 in punitive damages.
The punitive award was handed out by Justice Gareth Morley on the grounds that misappropriating a deposit and using it for personal expenses “is the kind of conduct that warrants retribution and denunciation,” saying only ordering payback of the invoiced amounts was an insufficient deterrent.
“These factors are aggravated here by the fact that the victim is a non-profit charitable society given public funds (which it may now have trouble accessing again for its charitable purposes) and that the defendant responded to the action by seeking to dissipate his assets in breach of a court order,” said Morley.
