Toronto MP Kevin Vuong has settled a $1.5 million lawsuit brought by a former colleague.
Designer and entrepreneur Anna Maria Mountfort alleged that Vuong and his business partner Larry Lau unfairly excluded her from a lucrative pandemic mask-making business called TakeCare Supply.
Mountfort filed the civil lawsuit in late 2020, alleging he came up with the name and design for the company’s iconic masks earlier that year. He was eventually forced out and paid a low salary in breach of his agreement with the defendants, according to his complaint filed in Toronto Superior Court.
The case was scheduled to go to trial this week but has now been settled out of court.
“The terms of the settlement are confidential,” Vuong, an independent member for the Downtown-Spadina-Fort York constituency, said in a brief email to CBC News on Tuesday.
Mountfort declined to comment.
Vuong denies plaintiffs are official partners: court filing
In previous court filings, Vuong and Lau denied that the plaintiffs were ever formal partners in their business.
Vuong, a naval reservist, ran as a Liberal candidate in the 2021 federal election but was rejected by the party just days before the vote. The Liberal party says Vuong failed to disclose an allegation of sexual assault in 2019, which was first reported in Parliament. Toronto Star.
The charges were eventually dropped. Vuong denied any wrongdoing and said the original accusations were “fanciful.”
Vuong was later fined $500 by the military for failing to report the criminal allegations to his superiors.
Vuong’s name still appeared on the ballot paper for the 2021 election as the Liberal Party candidate for the Spadina-Fort York electoral district.
Vuong said earlier this year he had asked Conservative Party leader Pierre Poirievre to allow him to join the Conservative caucus.