In a bizarre video shared to Instagram on Monday, Canadian Deciem founder Brandon Truaxe announced that the company would be shutting down all operations “until further notice.” This morning, after three full days of confusion and speculation among fans, social-media followers, and QAnon supporters, Truaxe posted another update: screenshots of a legal notice, which appears to have been sent by Mark Gelowitz, a partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto, on behalf of the Estée Lauder Companies, which own a minority stake in Deciem, and spells out the company’s alleged intentions to sue Truaxe in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
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“3 emails to say less than one word but more than 0 words,” Truaxe captioned the photo series, which shows the original email reportedly sent from Gelowitz summoning Truaxe to a Toronto court house to appear before a judge this morning at 10:30 a.m. ET to schedule a reading on injunctive relief, along with the company’s notice of application. Estée Lauder confirmed in a statement to CBC News that they have, in fact, taken legal action, but declined to comment further on the pending litigation.
The supposed filing shows that Estée Lauder seeks to remove Truaxe from Deciem’s Board of Directors, remove him from any employment at with Deciem (including President and/or CEO), and appoint Nicola Kilner — Deciem’s co-CEO, who Truaxe briefly eliminated from the company earlier this year before reinstating her position — as the sole interim CEO of Deciem. In addition, Estée Lauder asks to prohibit Truaxe from employing or terminating any Deciem staff, communicating with employees, suppliers, or business partners, and issuing statements on any of Deciem’s social-media accounts.
If Truaxe’s most recent post to the Deciem Instagram account is to be believed, he is currently in Amsterdam; this morning, he tagged the Hilton DoubleTree hotel chain to accuse them of placing a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s outside his suite. The series of photos also shows his room number and date of departure, implying that his presence in Toronto is not to be expected in court this morning. We’ve reached out to Deciem and the Estée Lauder Companies for comment, and will update this story when we hear back.