Martin Ester’s breach of law and lessons I learned from my legal claim

Photo of Dr. Martin Ester after becoming a Royal Society of Canada (RSC) fellow.

TL, DR; Prof. Martin Ester, a world-renowned scientist, deceived me into becoming his master’s student by making false funding promises, which eventually weren’t fulfilled. I launched a legal claim against him and successfully got back some of my owed funding. This article describes lessons I learned from the story and my advice to readers. You can read my demand letter in the GitHub version of this article.

This medium article doesn’t include the appendix, which contains the demand letter, while both the blog post on my personal website and the GitHub version do. The other sections are almost identical.

Disclaimer: This article only shows an aspect of Dr. Martin Ester, for which I have lots of compelling evidence to support my claims; it doesn’t indicate his personality in other aspects. Besides, these issues don’t mean Dr. Ester is a particularly bad professor: I’m pretty sure his problems are quite widespread in academia and comparatively he wasn’t that bad, although he was nowhere close to being truly good either. I’m not legally responsible for anyone distorting, exaggerating, falsifying, or misinterpreting anything mentioned in this article.
The photo of Prof. Martin Ester was created by SFU’s Communications & Marketing department (see its source), it is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, and no modifications were made. For more info, you can visit the Wikimedia link.

Table of Contents

· The Story
∘ Condensed timeline of events
· Lessons I learned from the legal claim
∘ Avoid becoming a research graduate student
∘ Don’t go for the money-saving option
∘ Be Proactive
∘ Be prudent and pragmatic
∘ Learn legal knowledge
∘ Wrongdoings have repercussions
· Important announcements

The Story

Dr. Martin Ester is a world-renowned computer scientist. He is the first author of the famous DBSCAN paper, which has close to 27,000 citations at the beginning of 2023. Among his many honors, he is a Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Fellow, and he was named the world’s №1 most influential data-mining expert in 2016.

However, Dr. Martin Ester also has skeletons in his cupboard: he violated the law due to breach of contract, by making false funding promises to recruit me as his master’s student, and eventually didn’t fulfill these promises. Several years after graduation, I started a legal claim against him and successfully got back some of the owed funding.

Yes, a world-renowned scientist, an RSC fellow, severely broke the promise by paying me less than half (43%) of the amount. Even though I only asked for 6430.72 CAD (~5,000 USD), which was just 27% of what he owed me (24073 CAD) based on the offer letter, he still refused to pay, forcing me to take legal action.

Condensed timeline of events

Before I go into the lessons I learned from this legal claim, let me give you a bit of background by presenting you with a condensed timeline of events.

1. At a certain time before 2016, the MADD-Gen program, which was a bioinformatics program in SFU funded by NSERC, was apparently going to have its funding terminated by the end of the calendar year 2016, due to incompetent and irresponsible management.
2. In Jan 2016, I applied for SFU’s Thesis-based Master in CS program (without expressing an interest in MADD-Gen).
3. In Feb 2016, Dr. Martin Ester reached out to me to recruit me as his master’s student under the MADD-Gen program, using its funding promise as a major selling point, without mentioning its imminent termination.
4. In Mar 2016, I accepted SFU’s offer as a thesis-based master in Computing Science under the MADD-Gen program. The offer letter promised a MADD-Gen fellowship funding of “at least 21,000 CAD per year for the first 2 years, with probably continued funding beyond the first two years”. I accepted the offer largely due to the enticing financial aid.
5. In July 2016, I was informed by Dr. Ester of “some uncertainty” surrounding the funding, and he suggested I apply for TA to cover the gap. I complied.
6. In Sept 2016, I started my studies as a thesis-based master supervised by Dr. Martin Ester.
7. In Jan 2017, I was informed that the funding wasn’t simply “uncertain”. It was terminated and I was deceived all along. Later in 2017, Dr. Ester tried to get funding continuation by setting up an “Omics” program to replace MADD-Gen, but was unsuccessful in getting MADD-Gen students funded through this new program.
8. In May 2017, I started working on my thesis research project, the goal was to get the work published in a journal.
9. In the academic year 2016 ~ 2017, I got 27.5K CAD of funding, part of which (~10K) came from TA salary, and only got 11K CAD MADD-Gen fellowship. In the academic year 2017 ~ 2018, I only got 8K CAD.
10. In 2018, I asked Dr. Ester multiple times for funding, but he insisted on using the acceptance of the paper by a journal as a prerequisite for releasing the funding. And he declined to pay me 13K, saying that the “overfulfilled” portion in year 1 should be deducted from the amount in year 2, resulting in only 6.4K CAD. This calculation method is unlawful, but I still agreed.
11. In Dec 2018, the submitted paper got a favorable first round of review. I tried to negotiate funding with Dr. Ester and he agreed to release half (3.2K CAD) of it immediately. But several days later, he retracted, reiterating the acceptance of the paper as the prerequisite. I then decided to graduate first.
12. In Mar 2019, I graduated.
13. In 2019, the paper cannot seem to get published despite multiple attempts, because the reviewers have changed, new reviewers were much more critical.
14. In Mar 2020, I asked Dr. Ester for funding again. He again used acceptance of the paper as the prerequisite.
15. In Oct 2022, after researching laws, the offer letter and university regulations, I finally launched a legal claim against Dr. Ester and successfully forced him to pay me 6.7K CAD (300 of which was accumulated interest) through a settlement agreement, although I could’ve claimed 25K CAD.

For more details, you can read my demand letter in the appendix of my GitHub post, while this Medium article doesn’t have appendices. That demand letter started a thread of email communication, which led to Dr. Ester seeking help from the university legal counsel, and they eventually agreed to completely satisfy my demands and settle the case.

Lessons I learned from the legal claim

Here are some valuable lessons I learned from this story, which might help readers, especially prospective research graduate students.

Avoid becoming a research graduate student

Avoid becoming a research graduate student, and don’t pursue a career in academia, unless you have compelling reasons.
As my story shows, there are a lot of risks if you choose to become a research graduate student, especially if you become a student in a foreign country. Just to name a few:

1. The supervisor-student relationship is almost modern slavery: your supervisors have a disproportionate amount of power over you, which they might abuse. They can decide your funding, your research progress, the (existence and) order of your name in the author list, your graduation requirements and date, approve or deny your internship, etc. Besides, there’s information disparity in the relationship: it’s often the student’s first or second time being a research graduate student, but the supervisor usually has had many prior students. And you have little leverage against them.
2. This power inequality is usually exacerbated by your supervisors’ intrinsic advantage over you. They are typically older, wealthier, more influential and powerful, and have more social experience than you, which means they’ll have more power over you even without the supervisor-student relationship. It’s even worse if you’re in a foreign country.
3. It’s extremely hard for prospective students to get truthful reviews of professors, no matter how thorough research they’ve done on prospective supervisors, for the following reasons:
   1. It’s very costly and hard for students to publicize negative information about their (former) supervisors. I’m very lucky to be able to do so, because I’ve graduated, and made up my mind to never go back to school again or work in academia, consequently, Martin Ester doesn’t have any leverage against me. But for most students, especially those who stay in academia, offending their former supervisors could damage their career prospects, which discourages them from publicizing such negative info. Even if they don’t have this concern, they might still be unwilling to disclose this info because it takes time to write and doesn’t benefit them.
   2. Supervisors and their affiliated institutes have vast amounts of power and resources to delete or dampen such unfavorable info. I won’t go into much detail here.
   3. Thus, until the beginning of 2023, there’s no negative information/reviews about Dr. Ester as a supervisor anywhere on the Internet. Till this one. I am also the first person to publish a negative review of Dr. Cenk Sahinalp, who was responsible for MADD-Gen program’s termination.
4. Many factors outside your control can influence your research output and study experience; you might end up having a terrible experience due to bad luck. For example, whether your supervisor has enough expertise in your research fields and can spot potential risks early on, whether your research direction happened to produce some pretty good results, whether the reviewers like your research paper and accept it, etc. You can see some examples from the “Timeline” section in my demand letter.
5. Depending on your field of study, the opportunity cost of a research graduate degree can be really high, especially if your graduation is deferred. Say, if I can earn an annual salary of 120K CAD per year after graduation (just for easier calculation), deferring graduation by 6 months will incur a lost income of 60K CAD, which is already higher than the total amount of money I spent throughout my master’s degree. OTOH, if I enrolled in a 16-month CS MSc program instead of a 2-year program, I could earn an additional 80K CAD due to graduating 8 months earlier.
6. Your interest may not be aligned with your supervisor’s, and they can use or abuse their power to make things unfavorable to you. For example, your interest could be getting your degree and starting working ASAP, but your supervisor’s interest could be getting more publications and won’t let go of you easily. Guess who usually wins this game.
7. Many points I mentioned above also apply to working in academia. Unless you have strong reasons, I suggest you not work in academia. An in-depth explanation is outside the scope of this article.

Don’t go for the money-saving option

Sometimes you shouldn’t go for the money-saving option: free stuff can be the most expensive.
This lesson is twofold: one for me, the other for Dr. Ester.

1. For me, saving tuition money resulted in a higher loss, in both money and life experience. An important reason for my decision to come to SFU and become Dr. Ester’s student is money: SFU had very low tuition and offered a juicy fellowship (which we all know wasn’t fulfilled), while all my other offers/admissions weren’t as enticing and cost a lot more. My family wasn’t very well-off and my father was a very nasty person, he didn’t want to spend much money on my postgraduate education, which made SFU’s offer look even better to me.
   However, due to the associated opportunity cost, this choice was actually the most expensive; furthermore, my experience at SFU wasn’t great either, for which I won’t go into details.
2. As for Dr. Ester, he tried to save money but eventually, he lost both the money and some reputation. He initially held on to the funding to incentivize me to get the paper published. However, even when it became clear that the paper cannot be published anymore (as of Mar 2020), he still refused to pay me. And he even tried to avoid the payment after I sent him the demand letter.
   Eventually, the case was settled, and he still had to pay me. If he paid me before I made the demand, I wouldn’t have written this article; I would still write another article to give a truthful review of him, which would be slightly more favorable than this one. Consequently, Dr. Ester not only lost the money he held so dear, but also lost some reputation which is much more precious than money.

Be Proactive

Be proactive. This is habit #1 of the famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which I recommend everyone to read.

1. Never put too much trust in anyone or anything, be the owner of your life and take responsibilities.
   I didn’t have a very good father, while Dr. Ester seemed to be a virtuous person with outstanding achievements, so I treated him as a father figure and placed a great deal of trust in him, which turned out to be ill-placed. For example, I shouldn’t have trusted his promise to “recommend you to some pretty good companies so you don’t need to apply for an internship”. But luckily, although blindly trusting his promise indeed brought me some troubles, I was able to find an internship by myself relatively soon, and his gross negligence/incompetence in internship recommendation didn’t lead to too disastrous outcomes. More details are in the “Timeline” section of my demand letter.
   Prior to launching this legal action, I consulted some people for their opinions. My parents and some friends were strongly opposed to this action and their reasons varied, some were justified and others weren’t.
   East Asian (especially Chinese) culture tends to defend and look up to senior people and teachers, which could be justified in their traditional societies, but the modern world has become drastically different, and these beliefs may not be justified anymore. Beliefs should serve human needs, not the other way around.
   I eventually decided that I should hold my ground and not listen to these people’s opinions. They are not victims and have no incentive to punish Dr. Ester, nor do they benefit from this legal action, so they don’t have strong reasons to support it; OTOH, this legal action indeed brings some risks to me. Therefore, their rational choice is to display their care for me by dissuading me from such an action, because they won’t lose anything if I don’t launch the claim; I will suffer a loss since I cannot do myself justice, but they don’t really care. OTOH, if they support my launching this claim and eventually it doesn’t work out properly, incurring huge losses on me, I might secretly blame them and they lose my trust, which is a more severe outcome for them.
   Obviously, their opposition simply comes from their stances and interest, not necessarily in my best interest. I must listen to their opinion with a huge grain of salt. I am ultimately responsible for and benefitting from my decisions, not them. Thus, I carried out my plan undeterred.
   Let’s summarize the learning here. Try to reduce your reliance on other people. No one cares about you more than yourself, no one or their opinions deserves your wholehearted trust. Be assertive, be responsible for your own life, and don’t give other people chances to ruin your life by simply failing to keep their promises; no matter what other people say, take it with a grain of salt and do whatever is truly in your best interest.
2. Stay vigilant and protect yourself: misconduct and legal violations can be more common than you think.
   You wouldn’t think an RSC-caliber scientist would rather violate the law than pay me 6430.72 CAD, but it indeed happened. And I’m pretty sure that legal violations are very common in academia and beyond, some done by very respectable people, but most of these wrongdoings are not publicized.
   I suggest employing 2 lines of defense to protect yourself and the public:
   First, you clearly set the boundaries and prevent/stop other people from compromising your personal or public interest, don’t back down even if the other person is very likable, respectable, renowned, etc; resist them at the first signs of harm, before you lose too much ground. This defense can prevent things from getting too severe, and is especially useful if the other person is having immoral but legal behaviors.
   If you cannot use the first line of defense, then fall back to the second one: intentionally gather and preserve documents that might serve as evidence later to do yourself justice.
   Here are my suggestions for preserving evidence:
   1. Manage your files effectively, keep multiple copies of them, and don’t unnecessarily delete them.
   2. Refrain from deleting relevant emails.
   3. Try to convert important oral information (notices, agreements, important numbers, promises, etc.) into written documents.
   4. You can make audio recordings stealthily if it complies with your local laws and regulations. There are also some tips and guidelines for making audio recordings for evidentiary purposes, which you can learn from some online sources.
3. Love yourself, stay confident and optimistic, and never yield to wrongdoers. In my case, when I was Dr. Ester’s student, I deeply believed that I deserved respect and fair treatment, what Dr. Ester did to me was unjust, and I would eventually do myself justice. His compromising my interest wasn’t due to my inherent incompetence; instead, it was due to the nature of our relationship and his advantages in social status and influence, wealth, etc., which naturally come with his age. Even if I was indeed inherently incompetent, it doesn’t mean he can violate the law and I should still defend my interests.
   If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you should believe that you’re worthy, defend your interest, and believe that the wrongdoers should and will be punished. Don’t justify their wrongdoing at your expense, don’t accept it as something normal or reasonable.
   Humans are all flawed and you are entitled to your legal rights regardless of your imperfections and flaws. Don’t fall for the victim mindset, where you force yourself to be perfect before you feel “worthy” of your legal rights, which can be a common mindset for some people due to their problematic upbringing.
   Quite unexpectedly, my persistence and perseverance also played another critical role: My desperate attempt to claim the funding in Mar 2020 renewed the debt claim, consequently, when I launched the legal action against Dr. Ester in Oct 2022, the dispute was still within the limitation period, so I could still escalate it to the court trial. This made my claim a credible threat to Dr. Ester and forced them to cooperate. If I simply gave up on this hope and didn’t attempt to claim it after my graduation, this legal battle in Oct 2022 wouldn’t have been launched, and I’d never be able to exercise my legal rights.
4. Be courageous and create the changes you want to see in the world. Although I had all the legal grounds to convict Dr. Ester in a lawsuit, if I never initiated this claim, I’d never do myself justice, or deter him from similar behaviors in the future. Also, AFAIK, this article is the first piece of negative info/review about Dr. Ester on the Internet. Probably there won’t be other people posting negative info/reviews about him. Instead of relying on other people, I take matters into my own hands.
   If you want to see some changes in the world, then be that change yourself, or actively contribute to it.
5. Your window of opportunity is often narrower than you think, seize it and execute.
   I launched this claim against Dr. Ester when multiple factors were in my favor simultaneously, including but not limited to: 1) I had decided not to go back to school anymore, Dr. Ester’s reference letter wouldn’t be needed; 2) I was still within the 2-year limitation period and could escalate this case to court proceedings (reason mentioned earlier); 3) My job was relatively secure; 4) I still possessed enough evidence to convict Dr. Ester.
   I was so glad that I struck at the right moment. Just 4 weeks after my demand letter was sent, I was impacted by my company’s layoff and had to devote all my time to working. If I postponed my action by several weeks, I might never get another opportunity to exercise my legal rights.
   Your window of opportunity is often narrower than you think, seize it when you can.
6. Accept what is outside of your sphere of influence and focus on what is within. Bad things do happen to you without any faults on your own; what matters is how you react to them.
   In my case, I wasn’t responsible for the termination of the MADD-Gen fellowship, but I had to bear the consequences of other people’s incompetence and irresponsibility. Still, I didn’t whine about it; I moved on, only making some very lenient and reasonable demands to Dr. Ester to teach him a lesson.
   MADD-Gen program funding was terminated due to 1) irresponsible and unrealistic promises were made to NSERC by the professors when the program was set up, and 2) the program was poorly and irresponsibly managed, especially when Dr. Cenk Sahinalp was the rotational chair of the program and he went to the US for his career opportunities, leaving his administrative responsibilities behind, paralyzing the program and made it completely impossible to fulfill the promises initially made to the NSERC; meanwhile, no other professors stepped up to take his responsibility and keep the program operational.
   I was not responsible for any of this incompetence or irresponsibility, but was hit especially hard by it, and that is life. Martin’s two former MADD-Gen MSc students enrolled in 2014 and graduated in 2016, they were well-funded throughout their studies. They were better funded than me not because they were exceptionally better, but simply because they were born earlier and enrolled earlier.
   Still, I calmly accepted this misfortune and didn’t whine. I carried on with my research and graduated; when taking the action against Dr. Ester, I didn’t hold him completely responsible for all this and ask him to compensate me for all the difference: I simply asked him to pay a very low amount of money (6739 CAD, not the 25K I could have asked for) to quickly settle the case in his favor. And he even (unsuccessfully) tried to get away with this payment.
   Nevertheless, I won the case and could carry on with my normal life.

Be prudent and pragmatic

Be prudent and pragmatic to achieve the highest ROI (return on investment). You can read The Art of War by Sun Tzu to truly understand it in a more generic setting.

1. Only declare war when you are in the right circumstances. Otherwise, you’ll suffer heavy losses and may not reach your goal.
   When I was Dr. Ester’s student, my top priority was graduation and applying for jobs, while the owed funding is trivial in comparison. After he broke his promise made in Jan 2019 (where he agreed to pay me 3215 CAD upfront) and denied me any funding, I chose to swallow it for the time being and try to graduate first, and seek justice later.
   I would suffer a colossal loss if I didn’t restrain myself then. If I declared war against him before my graduation, it would likely lead to his refusal of continuation as my supervisor, and I would have to switch supervisor or switch track into a course-based master: either way, my graduation would be delayed significantly, leading to very high opportunity costs. And it could be even worse: I graduated in Mar 2019 and got my job offer in June 2019, if my graduation was postponed all the way to 2020, I’d be severely impacted by the labor market downturn caused by the COVID lockdown, and would be set back years in my career progression, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, and probably lose some future opportunities that I otherwise could’ve been ready for, if I had graduated on time and accumulated enough work experience. And don’t even get me started on mental damages in this scenario.
   Then the circumstances gradually changed in my favor.
   After several years of working in the industry, I finally decided to never go back to school again, which meant that Dr. Ester’s reference letter wouldn’t be needed, which made it okay for me to sacrifice our relationship.
   The perfect timing arrived in Oct 2022, and I seized it immediately, dealing a decisive blow to Dr. Ester. My job was relatively secure and the workload was manageable, and I wrote the demand letter at a time with the lowest possible impact on my job: I wrote it during a 3-day long weekend, which was followed by 1 week of special arrangement by my company, during which I wasn’t expected to work on any sprint tasks in my job, so I had the time and energy to wait for Dr. Ester’s response and follow it up immediately. And I achieved my objective.
   Not only should you wait for the right circumstances, but you should also proactively create favorable circumstances.
   Sometimes, unintentional and seemingly trivial actions have profound effects.
   In Mar 2020, after it became apparent that the paper couldn’t be published, I sent an email to Dr. Ester in a desperate attempt to get back my money. Although he refused and reiterated the acceptance of the paper as a precondition, this attempt renewed the debt claim to 2 years and 7 months old as of Oct 2022. And because there was a 1-year suspension of the limitation period between Mar 2020 and Mar 2021 due to COVID-19, the debt claim was only 1 year and 7 months old, well within the 2-year limitation period, which meant I could still escalate this case to the court trial, which made my demand letter much more credible and intimidating, forcing them to cooperate. When I made the attempt in Mar 2020, I didn’t know about the limitation period or debt claim renewal, but this seemingly unnecessary and futile attempt made all the difference when I launched the legal action in Oct 2022.
   I also intentionally chose to stay in BC rather than relocate to other provinces/countries when switching jobs. Part of the motivation was to make it easier for me to go to BC court trials or hire local lawyers if I eventually launch the legal action against Dr. Ester and it escalates to court proceedings. Relocation to a different place also has psychological implications which would’ve greatly reduced my inclination of launching such a legal action.
   All these efforts finally paid off.
2. Contemplate thoroughly and predict your opponent’s actions, prevent and prepare for them. There are many examples in this demand letter, which all serve one purpose: to get Dr. Ester to satisfy my demands ASAP, with as few surprises and negative effects as possible. Let me name a few:
   1. I wrote this very long demand letter to present all the info at once, because:
   1.1. It can force the opponent to cooperate sooner. A long and thorough letter is very intimidating to the opponent, it shows my resolution and devotion to getting the issue resolved, and my strong confidence that I will win, forcing the opponent to cooperate sooner.
   1.2. It saves everyone’s time and energy. Presenting everything at once prevents future back-and-forth communications with the opponent to clarify information and laws relevant to this claim.
   2. To protect myself from potential illegal retaliations, I have informed several local friends of this claim and explicitly told Dr. Ester about it in the demand letter.
   3. I tried to avoid any suspicion of extortion in my demand letter. The opposing party can accuse me of extortion to invalidate my claim. For me, preventing this suspicion from the start is always better than proving my innocence to the judge later.
   3.1. I presented everything in the demand letter, explained my legal grounds and the associated facts thoroughly, establishing the legality of my claim.
   3.2. In the demand letter, I explicitly reiterated that nothing illegal will be done towards Dr. Ester, especially when mentioning “I do have several friends who are aware of the situation”. This is to avoid the opposing party accusing me of extortion: they can allege that the “friends” I mentioned here are in fact crime organizations, and I wrote this sentence to illegally threaten Dr. Ester.
   3.3. I didn’t use the sentence “I’m gonna make you an offer you cannot refuse” in the demand letter. I originally wanted to use it, but since this quote comes from Vito Corleone, a crime lord in The Godfather, the opposing party can allege I have criminal motives, which will put me in a disadvantageous position.
   4. I knew the opposing party would try to get me to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), so I explicitly stated that the refusal of the NDA is a non-negotiable term, and I would immediately escalate if they tried to negotiate the non-negotiable terms.
   5. I wrote the “Questions you may have” section in the demand letter to prevent Dr. Ester from attacking me and/or trying to distract me from the case; it also smashes his hope that he can dismiss or win this lawsuit. For example, I told him that I can escalate the case to court proceedings because it was still within the 2-year limitation period, and I have enough evidence to convict him, etc.
   6. I deliberately withheld some information to prevent Dr. Ester from taking advantage of it, creating uncertainty to intimidate him. For example, I didn’t tell him what the next step of escalation would be, I didn’t tell him within what timeframe I expected to get this resolved, etc. Notably, I anticipated Dr. Ester might use stalling tactics, so I tried to prevent it:
   6.1. I told him I gave him at most (instead of at least) 11 business days, I can reduce this time, or revoke any extensions, if he made me lose confidence in him.
   6.2. I told him that I “may or may not” warn him before escalating, creating this uncertainty and forcing him to cooperate quickly before I escalate. If I say “I’ll always warn you before escalating”, then he can waste my time by always only replying to me after I give him warnings.
   7. To prevent Dr. Ester from suspecting that I didn’t have the evidence and refusing to cooperate, in the demand letter, I made lots of quotes from his original emails, and I didn’t even fix his typos or grammatical errors. This makes him realize that I indeed possessed the evidence, preventing him from resisting and wasting our time and energy.
3. Be pragmatic in your legal battle based on your objectives. That’s why I only asked for a small amount of money (6739 CAD) and didn’t demand an apology from Dr. Ester.
   As I learned from The Art of War, we should try to achieve our strategic objectives at the lowest cost possible, and don’t overextend ourselves by trying to achieve objectives beyond our capacity.
   In this case, I have 3 major objectives in descending order: 1) Do myself justice and teach Dr. Ester a lesson; 2) Ensure my personal safety; 3) Get back some money.
   Proposing a small claim amount (6739 CAD) is favorable to Dr. Ester and is likely to get his cooperation quickly. I also warned him that I could claim much more if we escalate: 13,000 or 24,073 CAD. This escalation path forces him to cooperate early in the process. And if he cooperates early, I’ll avoid spending extra time on this case, which minimizes the impact on my normal life and work.
   I don’t need an apology; in fact, demanding an apology can harm me. Even if I force one from Dr. Ester, I don’t think it will be entirely sincere. Forcing Dr. Ester to apologize could humiliate him, which increases risks to my personal safety. Besides, if I insist on an apology, the opposing party might also use it as leverage to force my concession on other, more important terms, which is a bad bargain for me.

Learn legal knowledge

Legal knowledge is very important and useful, learn and use it to your advantage. Many people, especially immigrants from developing countries, don’t realize how important legal knowledge is. But laws are essential: it is almost the only legitimate weapon you have against people violating the laws.

1. The lawyer may not be competent or responsible; do thorough research and trust your own judgment.
   Lawyers like to depict themselves as guardians of society and justice, but most are really not: they are merely businesspeople. They might help, but don’t rely on them, sometimes you can only rely on yourself, and that’s when it becomes even more important to learn legal knowledge.
   In my case, I had a hard time finding a lawyer because this case would only qualify for BC small claims court, most lawyers were unwilling to take such “frivolous” cases. While I indeed found two lawyers who were willing to arrange consultations with me, they had their issues: the first was incompetent, and the second was most likely also incompetent.
   My admission letter said that the funding is “contingent upon your satisfactory progress towards all requirements…”. The meaning of “satisfactory progress” then becomes extremely important.
   When consulting with the first lawyer (in a paid session), he thought that “satisfactory progress” was a phrase subject to the professor’s interpretation. Although I strongly suggested that it might not be the case and we need to check whether it is a stringently defined terminology, he dismissed this suggestion. He then claimed that this case was extremely difficult to win and refused to take it.
   But he was wrong. After carefully researching university regulations, I found “satisfactory progress” to be a terminology defined in my favor, and I should be entitled to the funding because I had “satisfactory progress” throughout my studies. Dr. Ester violated the admission letter, which means he violated the Contract Law. His ad-hoc condition of “getting the paper accepted before releasing the fund” also violates the Contract Law due to Unconscionability, hence it is illegal.
   Although I never had the consultation with the second lawyer, I strongly suspect he was incompetent too. He didn’t know there was a 1-year suspension of the limitation period due to COVID (a huge red flag), and he insisted that I bring all the documents to him in hard copies rather than in electronic copies (a smaller red flag), although I voiced my opposition, telling him that text in paper documents cannot be searched like electronic documents, and I had some special files which cannot be easily converted to paper format. Several days later, after my legal research, I became confident that I would win this case without a lawyer’s help, so I canceled my appointment with him.
   As you can see from the demand letter, I was right, the definition of “satisfactory progress” made my case a certain win, and I’m glad I have dived really deep here and didn’t take things for granted like the first lawyer. And I’m also pretty sure that visiting the second lawyer wouldn’t have added any value to my lawsuit, only costing me more time and money.
   You see, no one knows about and cares about your case more than you do. You should learn legal knowledge relevant to your case, dive deep into laws and your legal documents, clarify ambiguities, and not take things for granted. Sometimes you need to trust your own judgment and reject the lawyer’s.
2. Dive deep into legal documents prior to signing and don’t overlook small details.
   This is super hard to do, but necessary, nevertheless. Most of the time, we simply sign some legal documents (employment contract, admission letter, etc.) without carefully reading them. This habit can bite you if any disputes arise later.
   In my case, the definition of “satisfactory progress” helped me. But what if they used a different phrase that isn’t clearly defined (say, “good standing”, or “good progress”), and is subject to interpretation by the university or the professor? What if the admission letter says that your financial aid is conditional on the availability of the MADD-Gen funding? In these cases, it’d be much harder for me to win (but I might still win, will explain later).
   I’m afraid that some people might deliberately use obscure words and phrases in legal documents to gain an unfair advantage over you if any disputes arise.
   My suggestion for you is, before signing any legal documents (employment contract, admission letter, etc.), please make sure you truly understand the meaning of some important words, phrases, and clauses, and make sure that your rights are adequately protected. If you spot such ambiguities and problems, please ask the other party for clarification or amendment.
   Let me give you an example based on my admission letter. As I mentioned earlier, assume that the admission letter says the fellowship is also “subject to the availability of the funding”, then you should be especially vigilant upon seeing this and ask clarifying questions. When answering your questions, the professor and university will try to protect themselves by staying ambiguous, but for your own interest, you should be aggressive, get to the bottom of the problem, don’t settle for superficial and ambiguous answers. Ask the professor the following questions, politely but clearly:
   “What is the current status of the MADD-Gen fellowship? Are the funding agencies committed to continued funding?”
   “Do you see any risk of the fellowship getting reduced or terminated in the upcoming 3 years?”
   “If you do see such risks, what are they? How likely are they? How will you solve my funding problem if such risks indeed happen?”
   Don’t worry if asking such tough questions irritates or offends them. There’s so much at stake, you must be fully responsible for yourself and get clear answers to these questions, offending them is the least of your worries. In fact, if they get offended simply because you ask those questions, it means they have something to hide from you. In this case, congratulations on identifying and avoiding a potentially bad supervisor!
   Asking such questions will force the professor or university to provide concrete answers. Please preserve these conversations (best if they are email communications), so that if they lie to you, these conversations will serve as strong evidence when you launch legal claims several years later.
   Note that even if you don’t clarify ambiguities like this, the court typically rules in favor of the weaker party if any disputes arise due to ambiguous terms, so don’t give up on legal claims if you didn’t ask these questions.
   Tip: in employment contracts, aside from compensation clauses which you’ll always read carefully, please also carefully read the governing law clause, termination clause, arbitration clause (if any), class action clause (if any), severability clause, etc. Make sure your rights aren’t compromised.
   You can hire a lawyer to help you review such documents.
3. When negotiating, always prepare for an escalation to court proceedings. Assuming that everything you say or do will be recorded as evidence, try to make sure this evidence will help you win the case, if the case escalates to court proceedings.
   This means you need to do the following: 1) don’t distort, exaggerate or falsify anything related to the case, simply tell the plain truth (especially to your lawyer); 2) try to make sure everything you say, especially the important things, is backed by evidence or witnesses; 3) be polite, respectful and professional to the opposing party, even if they don’t return the favor, and definitely don’t extort or coerce the opponent illegally; 4) make legitimate and reasonable demands, show your goodwill and willingness to cooperate, and always be open to negotiation; 5) prioritize settlement over court trial; 6) properly and thoroughly assess your case, especially your weaknesses and the opponent’s strengths, make reasonable compromises based on them, only fight for cases you have reasonable chances of winning.
   If you strictly follow my advice, it will be the most beneficial to you. You’ll most likely reach an early settlement, which means saving time and money. If the opposing party doesn’t cherish your goodwill and goes to a court trial, your reasonable stance and calm attitudes in prior negotiations mean that it is the opposing party who has been unreasonable and wasting public legal resources, which will likely lead to a result in your favor.
   Let’s generalize about this learning and try to be a nice person all the time. You should always behave as if there will be a dispute arising in the future, and everything you say and do now will be presented as evidence in the court proceedings. If you are polite, reasonable, and professional all the time, it will not only help you greatly in court proceedings, but also likely to prevent the dispute from arising in the first place. And the benefit doesn’t simply end here: being a nice person can help you establish great interpersonal relationships and make it easier for you to succeed in your career. Why not make it a habit even without taking court proceedings into consideration?
   Of course, you need to set clear boundaries to protect your interest while being nice.

Wrongdoings have repercussions

Wrongdoings will have repercussions and don’t count on luck.
There is a law of the universe: everything you do has some consequences. Sometimes other people will swallow the bad consequences of your behavior, but not always. Dr. Ester might think that his legal violation was very minor, but I still don’t tolerate it, and rightfully so.
If Dr. Ester could go back in time, he definitely wouldn’t have done this to me. Clearly, the money he temporarily saved didn’t worth the damage to his reputation.
So the lesson is: be a good person, don’t violate moral standards and law, otherwise you might end up losing much more than what you gained. Don’t gamble with your reputation.

Important announcements

It takes a lot of courage to be a whistleblower. I want to minimize my risk, and make sure my whistleblowing is maximally effective. So here are some important announcements I need to make to facilitate these goals.

1. If the below cases happen to me, they are most likely premeditated crimes, from which Martin Ester’s suspicion cannot be ruled out, due to my whistleblowing activity against him.
   1. I am physically healthy and don’t have any medical conditions that can lead to my sudden death. I also live cautiously and healthily, without any habits that could lead to sudden death. If I suddenly die, it is suspicious and could be a murder.
   2. I am mentally healthy and don’t suffer from any mental illnesses. I’ve never committed or tried to commit suicide, and I promise I won’t commit suicide. If I commit “suicide” someday, it’s most likely a murder.
   3. I am a very cautious person. I don’t travel a lot, I don’t play extreme sports, and I’m so careful that I haven’t had any major traffic accidents, or any other types of major accidents. If such an “accident” happens to me, it is likely a premeditated crime.
   4. I don’t have relationships with any crime organizations, nor do I engage in any illegal activities. If it seems that some crimes happened to me due to my illegal activities, these “illegal activities” are most likely faked by the criminals to make them look less guilty.
2. Dr. Ester and SFU might launch PR campaigns to remove, denigrate or downplay this article. Please stay vigilant.
   1. Since this article is based on evidence, I’m not afraid if they send me a lawyer’s letter, and I’ll try my best to avoid it from being removed, but I cannot guarantee my success.
   2. They might get other people to write positive reviews of Dr. Ester to make this article less conspicuous and less convincing. If that happens, please notice my article was written before theirs, they were merely reacting; besides, even if these positive reviews are based on facts, these facts can coexist with the legal violation that Dr. Ester has committed. Even I have complimented him in my demand letter.

Originally published at https://antonfeng.me.