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The situation has been compounded by the way the station handled a request for information on the station’s member-donors by SAVEJAZZ.FM, a group of members organized by Brian Hemming, a veteran of the world of investor relations and shareholder communications.

The group came together because of operational, governance, artistic and financial concerns at the station, with a plan to make an appeal directly to the station’s members. To do so, they asked for the email addresses of the station’s more than 2,000 members, who achieve that status by donating $20 a month.

Hemming and his group — ably supported by a group of lawyers from McCarthy Tetrault — haven’t made a mistake since.

The station objected on the grounds that turning over the information would be a breach of the privacy agreement it had made with its member-donors.

That argument didn’t carry any weight with Justice Sean Dunphy of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice. On December 14, after a much-shortened hearing — Hemming’s lawyers were not required to make a verbal presentation — Justice Dunphy said the station took a “narrow view of its obligations.” And in Dunphy’s opinion, that narrow view, “was clearly adopted to frustrate the applicants and not — as suggested — out of concern to maintain privacy.”

For good measure, Justice Dunphy noted that “an honest and open response to a dissident campaign” needn’t “waste the time and resources of the dissident and the corporation.” In his view, “tossing roadblocks in the way of democracy is not (a good use) of the corporation’s money.” (The station spent about $30,000 on defending its actions.)