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

Valuable wisdom learned from the legal claim against a world-renowned scientist

FEATURED ON HOMEPAGE

1/4/202366 min read

Martin Ester shot when getting the Royal Society of Canada fellowship

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, I also have my demand letter included in the appendix.

A duplicate of this article is on GitHub. A shorter version of this article is on Medium, which doesn't have the appendices containing the demand letter.

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.

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 No. 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.

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.
In Jan 2016, I applied for SFU’s Thesis-based Master in CS program (without expressing an interest in MADD-Gen).
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.
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.
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.
In Sept 2016, I started my studies as a thesis-based master supervised by Dr. Martin Ester.
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.
In May 2017, I started working on my thesis research project, the goal was to get the work published in a journal.
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.
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.
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.
In Mar 2019, I graduated.
In 2019, the paper cannot seem to get published despite multiple attempts, because the reviewers have changed, new reviewers were much more critical.
In Mar 2020, I asked Dr. Ester for funding again. He again used acceptance of the paper as the prerequisite.
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 the demand letter in the appendix. That demand letter started a thread of email communication (part of which is included in the appendix), 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. My email communication with the legal counsel is omitted from this article.

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:

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.
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.
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 is a despicable person directly responsible for MADD-Gen program's termination.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.

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 interests, 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 deserve 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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. 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.
  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.
  1. I presented everything in the demand letter, explained my legal grounds and the associated facts thoroughly, establishing the legality of my claim.
  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. 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:
  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.
  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.
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.

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.
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.
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.

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.
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.

Appendix: selected email communications

This appendix only contains a subset of the email communication started by my demand letter. Other emails, including how we reached the settlement agreement, are omitted from this appendix.

My demand letter

The demand letter was sent on Oct 11 at 7:30 AM.
Title: [URGENT] Request for my remaining funding of 2017~18 academic year, otherwise legal actions will ensue
Dear Dr. Ester,

Thanks for reading my email. Especially, happy (though just passed) Canadian Thanksgiving!

Please acknowledge the receipt of this email at your earliest convenience, no need for a complicated reply. Otherwise, I'll send more emails to remind you, or even escalate. All these are explained in more detail in the "My Demands" section and "How I expect you to respond to this email and request" subsection.

About this email

I'm writing this email to request my remaining funding for the 2017~18 academic year, which is a long-standing issue between us, and may or may not escalate to court proceedings depending on how things develop. The amount I ask for is 6739 CAD if we're able to settle this case soon, and more details will be in later sections.

I originally wanted to send it to our School of CS for mediation, but I decided to send it directly to you first, because I believe you are a rational person and we might be able to resolve it privately without the School's involvement. OTOH, I do have several friends who are aware of the situation between us and are updated on the development, but they certainly won't harm you in any way w.r.t. this issue.

This email is very long and detailed because I want to minimize the back and forth in our email exchanges. Providing you with the most important info all in 1 email might save everyone's time.

You might have a lot of questions and I'll try to answer them later in this email. Believe me, I'm giving you very favourable terms to settle this case, which I'll also explain later.

But before diving into that, let me express my gratitude towards you for your guidance and help throughout my Master's studies.

Expression of Gratitude

You might think I'm being sarcastic given this context. But no. I don't take your help and guidance along the way lightly: the gratitude comes from the bottom of my heart.

You are a world-renowned scientist, exemplified by a sustained track record of excellence throughout the decades, culminating in the award of Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Fellow, and being named as the world's No. 1 most influential data-mining expert in 2016.

Your sustained excellence is achieved through your lifelong consistency in learning, deep-diving, and physical and mental exercise. You're able to maintain a work-life balance despite heavy workloads, and your energy and humour are a delight to everyone around you. The fact that you're able to keep such good health and body shape at this age is, in and of itself, a feat.

RSC Fellowship is not an honour enjoyed by many, which also holds for being the student of an RSC fellow. As your student, I was able to learn a lot of good habits from you, such as time management, paper reading, academic writing, etc., but nowhere near your level of mastery. Your influence and inspiration have been and will be greatly cherished by all your students, and always serve as a reminder for us to go above and beyond in our own areas.

You are also friendly and nice to students, giving us more time and energy to study in a self-motivated fashion and enjoy life. Despite being a world-renowned scientist, you exhibit a high degree of humility and inquisitiveness, which will always make you a role model in your students' scientific and life endeavours.

So apparently, it has been a difficult decision for me to finally make up my mind to request my remaining funding from you. I'll explain the situation below.

Timeline of important events surrounding this claim

First, let's rewind what happened over the years leading to this claim. BTW, this is not an exhaustive timeline of all events related to this claim. For a lot of them, especially the most important ones, I have compelling proof/evidence, but still, if you have any different narrative as to how some of the following events unfolded, it's fine as long as what you said is also true.

Those marked as "unimportant" are not directly relevant to this case/claim itself, but are influential in how our relationship progressed, providing the background and answering some potential questions, and they help to prove the sacrifice and compromise I made towards you, which will be discussed later in this email. So in a way, they're also important.

At a certain time before 2016, the MADD-Gen program, which was a bioinformatics program in SFU funded by NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada), received an unfavourable mid-term review, and it became apparent that it will be impossible for the MADD-Gen program to meet the promises made when initially applying for funding from NSERC to set it up. This meant an almost certain termination of the MADD-Gen program by the end of the calendar year 2016.
In Jan 2016, I applied for SFU's Thesis-based Master in Computing Science program.
In Feb 2016, you reached out to me, expressing interest in recruiting me as your Master's student, and told me you had "an opening for a MSc student in the MADD-Gen program", which I said would be of interest to me. We had a pleasant Skype meeting. With mutual interest, we made steady progress in making the offer to recruit me under the MADD-Gen program.
1. In the Skype meeting, you mentioned there would be an additional merit-based fellowship (not for separate applications) for MADD-Gen students. A couple of days later, you explained it in more detail in an email, here is the quote: "since the number of MADD-Gen students has not yet reached the maximum number, so far all MADd-Gen students have received the fellowship of $6500/annum. Within increasing number of students, these fellowships will become competitive (although not very competitive). At that time we will develop some simple merit-based criteria..."
In Mar 2016, I received the offer letter (see attached) from SFU School of Computing Science (SFU School of CS will also be called "the department" or "the School" later in this email), admitting me into the MADD-Gen MSc program starting in Fall 2016, and offering me the MADD-Gen MSc fellowship (will be called "the fellowship" later in this email).
1. Based on the exact quote from the offer letter, the fellowship was, "in the amount of at least $21,000 per year for a minimum of 2 years, contingent upon your satisfactory progress towards all requirements of the School of Computing Science, as well as the MADD-Gen graduate fellowship program."
2. Another exact quote from the letter is, "You can expect continued funding beyond the initial 2 years, subject to funding availability and your satisfactory progress towards your degree."
In late March 2016, I accepted this offer. This meant I declined offers/admissions from other universities, in which the financial incentive offered by SFU played a major role.
Throughout the above process, I was NEVER informed of the inevitable termination of the MADD-Gen program and the loss of its fellowship funding.
In July 2016, I received an email from you, which you informed me that "Unfortunately, there is some uncertainty concerning the funding for our MADD-Gen program. It is no reason to worry, since we are working with our funding agency NSERC and with SFU to ensure the future funding. However, in order to have more options for your financial support, I would like to ask you to apply for a TA position in the fall."
1. I took your advice and applied for TA positions.
2. In fact, in early 2017, I was informed that MADD-Gen funding was completely canceled, rather than merely suffering from “some uncertainty”.
In Sept 2016, I started my Master's studies as a MADD-Gen student under your supervision. Fall 2016 was the last ever term (and the only term) I received the MADD-Gen fellowship, which was 10,927 CAD. I also received a Graduate Fellowship (6,700 CAD) from the department, which applies to all incoming research graduate students in the department (irrespective of whether you're a MADD-Gen student) for their first term, not the one for MADD-Gen you mentioned.
In Fall 2016 and Spring 2017, I worked as TA for 1 course in each of these terms and received a TA salary of 9942.28 CAD in total.
1. So my total funding (TA + Graduate fellowship + MADD-Gen fellowship) for the academic year 2016~17 was 9942.28 + 6700 + 10927 = 27,569.28 CAD.
(Unimportant) In Jan 2017, in a 1-1, I expressed interest in participating in co-op programs and working as an intern sometime during my program. You turned down this idea, suggesting that I should focus on research, and you said "I will recommend you to some pretty good companies so you don't need to apply by yourself". This indeed happened to your former students, so I complied.
In early 2017, we started formulating research topics. You eventually decided to let me partner with your long-time collaborator, Dr. Artem Cherkasov, a computational chemist working at Vancouver Prostate Center (VPC), and he is also affiliated with UBC.
1. I agreed with this arrangement and was looking forward to working with him on his research topics. Initially, he considered letting me join the research led by Dr. Jason Rolfe, a Machine Learning expert from DWave, on a molecular Auto-Encoder project, and I was also very interested in it, but my involvement was barred due to some unfortunate events. This is slightly off-topic so I don't go into details here.
In May 2017, as Dr. Cherkasov strongly suggested, we eventually decided to work on using Deep Learning to study Drug-Target Interaction (DTI) problems, which will be related to what Marten and Tong (your former students) worked on in their Simboost paper, but will use a different approach.
1. As mentioned in the previous point, there was some complication with this decision-making process and I wasn't very keen on this direction from the beginning and chose it kinda unwillingly, but it's a bit irrelevant and I won't go into details.
2. In his "sales pitch" of this idea, Dr. Cherkasov envisioned two phases of this research: first was predicting drug-target interactions, and the second was using the model obtained from phase 1 to calculate the binding affinity between some compounds (candidate drugs) and AR (Androgen Receptor, a protein), and then use it to predict the efficacy of this compound on prostate cancer, in which the compounds binding strongly to AR should have a strong efficacy on prostate cancer but not necessarily on other types of cancers. This sounded really exciting and interesting to me at the time, especially phase 2, which brings it to a whole new level. However, as we later found in 2018 through actual data analysis, although phase 1 did yield some good results, phase 2 didn't quite work out: these compounds with strong binding affinity to AR showed general toxicity to all cancer cell lines, not specific to prostate cancer cells. As I mentioned later in this timeline, we were working on phase 2 from June 2018 all the way to Oct 2018 and it was futile, but we reported the negative findings in the paper nevertheless.
3. You might want to say how high the Simboost paper citation is, but I need to remind you of the mistake the authors made in calculating RMSE which made the results look better than they actually were. I found this issue and reported it to you. It is irrelevant to this case and I won't go into details there.
Around the summer of 2017, you explicitly suggested that I should focus on research work and not take further TAships. I complied.
In the academic year 2016~2017, you mentioned the option of transferring to PhD in front of me more than once, probably in an attempt to convert me to a PhD student. I never responded explicitly, which showed a lack of interest in this option.
(Unimportant) In summer and fall 2017, I was reading papers and, following the suggestion from Dr. Cherkasov, developed a prototype Deep Neural Network (DNN) model using the embeddings produced by the Simboost paper as the input feature of the model to see whether it could produce some interesting results.
1. In Oct 2017, I presented the results to you and Dr. Cherkasov, and we agreed that the results seemed okay.
2. Later, I worked on improving the DNN performance by tuning the hyperparameters, and in the process, getting more familiar with DNN in general and in the cheminformatics field.
In 2017, you were working with colleagues to set up a new bioinformatics program (eventually named Omics) to substitute the now-terminated MADD-Gen program, in the hope of continuing to provide funding to the MADD-Gen students.
Around late 2017 (exact time not sure), you informed us of an unfortunate event: an important official of the University, who was a strong supporter of this new program, had voiced his objection to providing financial support for students in the MADD-Gen program from the new program's funding. He insisted that the funding should only be used for recruiting new students under the Omics program. Hence it seems that the hope of "working with our funding agency NSERC and with SFU to ensure the future funding" has now been lost.
1. You said you voiced your opposition to his opinion and insisted that the existing students recruited through the MADD-Gen program be funded, but he was adamant.
Around Nov 2017, I applied for a departmental scholarship valued at 1,000 CAD without your help and got approved. You congratulated me when I informed you of this approval.
In Feb 2018, my research on DTI finally yielded some good preliminary results, now using the custom input features, not the Simboost one. You then asked Dr. Cherkasov to provide me with a RAship of 7,000 CAD, which he did. Although I should thank you for getting him to pay me, this amount (7,000) was not previously communicated or consulted with me, you only informed me after he agreed. It was too low to be adequate.
1. One thing I appreciate is that you helped appease Dr. Cherkasov when he wasn't pleased with the research status in Jan 2018. That said, you were also protecting your own interest in that you needed to make Dr. Cherkasov believe you're competent, to continue your collaboration.
I asked you for funding multiple times in 2018. But you seem to be having some problems with grant applications at this time, so I was being considerate and not pushing too hard.
1. I helped you with a grant application related to bioinformatics in spring-summer 2018, which was eventually unsuccessful.
2. You said that you'd give the funding to me once the paper gets accepted. This would be a recurring theme in the remainder of this timeline.
Around 2017 and 2018, you mentioned or implied (both verbally and written) that I should only graduate after the paper gets accepted. So I didn't ask for graduation early (I only did so in Jan 2019 after our paper got very favourable first-round reviews), knowing that you would have declined it. Otherwise, I might have been able to graduate in Fall 2018, or even earlier, probably giving me several more months to earn a salary as a full-time employee.
In early summer (Apr ~ July) 2018, as my research was making steady progress, I started considering applying for an internship. Only then did I realize that I needed a co-op work permit to work as an ordinary intern, and the time taken from the application to approval could be well over 4 months. This meant doing an ordinary internship for the remainder of 2018 became unrealistic.
1. You were surprised by this and disappointed. I was disappointed too, and at the time, blamed myself for not taking the initiative to plan early on and blindly trusting you as someone knowing the process and would help me along the way.
2. Fortunately, doing an internship with the support of the Mitacs agency was still possible without a coop work permit. While you recommended me to Samsung through a liaison, which eventually didn't lead to any results, I applied for a company named Terramera through my own connection and was given an offer to work as a Mitacs intern for the Fall 2018 term, with the total compensation (paid in the form of RAship) being 15,000 CAD.
3. In the process of applying for Terramera, you provided some help, which was actually required for Mitacs internships because it was intended to be a partnership between the professor's lab and industry partners, but perhaps I still need to express some gratitude towards it.
On July 25, I posted the first version of my then-working paper to arXiv. The paper was titled "PADME: A Deep Learning-based Framework for Drug-Target Interaction Prediction". It will be called "the PADME paper" or "the paper" later in this email.
While the first phase of the research had some good results, the second phase, where we wanted to extrapolate the drug-target binding affinity to the cellular level, didn't produce the expected results that Dr. Cherkasov envisioned back in May 2017.
1. I had constant communication with you and Evgenia (2nd author of our PADME paper) throughout this process and you were aware of it.
In mid-September 2018, I started my internship as a computational chemist at Terramera.
In October 2018, the second author of my paper, Dr. Evgenia Dueva, left Dr. Cherkasov's lab and returned to Russia, pursuing a career in industry. This has ramifications for the fate of our paper later on.
1. She told me, in the presence of other people, that she wasn't satisfied with the way she was treated in VPC and decided to leave. She first tried job-hunting locally but was futile, the only companies extending her offers were in Russia, hence returning.
2. She never participated in the paper ever since.
In late October 2018, we finally finished the second phase of the research and decided to submit the paper to the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling (JCIM).
1. Around the same time, I also updated my arXiv version of the paper.
2. We truthfully reported all results, including negative ones, in both versions of the paper.
(Unimportant) Right after the paper was submitted, Terramera complained to you regarding my internship performance, mostly because I spent too much time working on my paper during working time in the company and was seen as distracted.
1. I need to thank you for protecting me in your communications and persuading Terramera to give me more chances, though you also had your own interest in it, because you wanted to have potential collaborations with Terramera and didn't want to sabotage your relationship.
(Unimportant) Since late October 2018, I worked diligently in Terramera (in large part due to the paper being submitted) and finished the original plans for my internship program, until it ended in early Jan 2019.
In Nov 2018, the internship salary (15,000 CAD) was paid to me in the form of an RAship.
Around Nov 2018, you were working with Terramera on a national grant application, clearly the collaboration had been established because of me.
Around Nov 2018, I asked you for the funding you still owed me in the 2017~2018 academic year.
1. I originally asked you for 13,000 CAD (21,000 - 7,000 - 1,000 = 13,000), but you declined this request, saying that "The funding over-fulfilled in prior years should be deducted from the outstanding amount of the second year". You then informed all the labmates of this calculation principle of outstanding amounts in our weekly lab meeting.
2. I didn't like the idea.
  1. 9942.28 CAD of my 2016~17 academic year funding was actually my TAship salary, while from my departmental admission letter, this shouldn't count towards the funding promise.
  2. The fellowship funding in my 2016~17 academic year was actually 3,373 (17,627 out of 21,000) short of the funding promise, and I thought I was already doing you a favor by not claiming this 3,373. And even this way of calculation is already in your favour, because the Graduate Fellowship valued at 6,700 was awarded to all incoming graduate students and was not a part of the MADD-Gen funding promise, if we strictly follow the departmental offer letter and you didn't deceive me when recruiting me. The actual reasonable amount that you owed me is 21000 - 10927 = 10073 CAD.
  3. Yet you were further encroaching on my financial resources by deducting the money I earned through labor (teaching) in my first academic year from my second year's funding promise.
  4. The departmental admission letter only specified the minimum amount, PER year. In principle, the first year shouldn't count toward the second year.
  5. I was deceived into signing the offer letter in the first place and I was hoping you could honour its terms, which apparently wasn't happening.
3. Still, given all those issues, I told myself that, "Martin is having funding difficulty and I should be tolerant and considerate. Also, this money issue isn't super important, graduation is. Besides, even with this new calculation, I'd still have 6,430.72 CAD (21,000 * 2 - 27569.28 - 7000 - 1000 = 6430.72) funding which Martin will pay me, which will greatly improve my financial situation nevertheless."
In early December 2018, the first round of reviewer feedback from JCIM was received. It was overall pretty positive and we were confident to get it published.
1. Hoping to seize this opportunity, I requested you to ask Dr. Cherkasov to provide more funding, which you declined, saying that it would only be appropriate when the paper is formally accepted.
In mid-Dec 2018, I pushed you again for funding. In your reply, there was such a sentence: "Keep in mind that the MITACS internship counts toward your funding promise".
1. I was angry upon seeing this, given the fact that you were involved in my Mitacs internship throughout the process and knew full well that the starting date of my Mitacs internship was in mid September, strictly not within the first two academic years. Counting it towards my first 2 years of funding promise didn't make any sense.
2. I know you forget things a lot and this mistake might not be on purpose, but gross negligence can also irritate people.
3. Upon seeing your reply on Dec 22, I replied to you with several emails in a row, explaining why it shouldn't count towards my second year, why I should get the remaining amount, and how I wanted to keep a good relationship with you long into the future, and helping you or your family in times of need. I didn't get any reply: maybe you didn't see them, or maybe you pretended you hadn't seen them.
4. I decided to prioritize graduation.
Around the end of 2018, multiple SFU CS professors, including you, were offered a large amount of funding from a company (call it “company A”) for research on cybersecurity. The funding allocated to you seems to be north of 100K CAD and, based on what I heard from relevant people, you had some autonomy on how to allocate this funding, which means it wasn't strictly used on students working for company A’s research project.
1. I also heard that company A’s liaison didn't really care what project you were working on for this funding: it seems that he was just working on his KPI to spend money and establish partnerships with academia, not truly caring about the ROI or the academic value/impact of the research.
From late 2017 all the way to my graduation, I was living miserably like a beggar, in large part due to low income. You were aware of this situation all along but decided to withhold my funding nevertheless.
1. Around summer 2018, you asked me, with a caring look on your face, about how I funded myself. You were seemingly very caring about my financial situation but apparently weren't going to provide me any material relief.
2. Also around summer 2018, you specifically advised me not to take credit card rolling debts because of its high interest rate.
In mid Jan 2019, I had a formal 1-1 discussion with you on graduation. You agreed that I should kickstart the graduation process. In that meeting, I also discussed the funding issue with you and you explicitly agreed that the Terramera internship salary of 15,000 CAD strictly belongs to my 3rd academic year and shouldn't be counted towards my funding promise for 2017~18 (my second) academic year.
1. You turned down my suggestion to ask for funding from Dr. Cherkasov, reiterating that we should only "ask him for funding after the paper gets accepted", despite his gross negligence of an important email causing ~1-month delay in experiments and, in turn, my graduation date, while the funding I ask from him can be seen as a kind of damage remuneration. Obviously, you didn't want to displease him, while my interest and well-being were not as important.
2. You wanted to withhold all of 6,430.72 CAD until I got the paper accepted. I persuaded you to (temporarily) agree with my proposal: release half of that amount immediately (~3215), and give me the remaining half after the paper is accepted. (In fact, if it actually happened, I might not be sending this email to you now)
3. In the ensuing days, you didn't honour this oral agreement/promise, despite my asking you multiple times. Later you confessed to me, saying you've changed your mind: you've decided to withhold all this amount until the paper gets accepted. And you were adamant despite my protest.
4. I was disappointed, but I wanted to speed up my graduation process so I reluctantly accepted this condition for the time being.
(Unimportant) In late January 2019, you behaved uncooperatively when I was proposing the dates of the thesis defence, you didn't believe I would finish the paper by a certain date (which, later, I indeed proved I was able to finish by that date), and you didn't listen for my explanation on why I needed to plan well in advance (>5 weeks) due to departmental regulations, despite my strong insistence on having the defence at the time I wished. I was forced to promise you that I would have the thesis draft ready by a certain date, and then proceed to organize the defence with your approval.
1. After I indeed finished the thesis draft by that date, you said you were a bit surprised, and agreed to start formally planning the defence. Due to this delay, I had to postpone my defence for ~10 days.
2. You didn't know the department had that time requirement of >5 weeks, and you weren't willing to learn. When I initially told you, you refused to listen and were very uncooperative, if not rude. Only later did you realize what I told you was indeed true and you indeed delayed my thesis defence due to negligence.
3. The delay of ~10 days of thesis defence wasn't a big deal, but it further damaged your impression in my heart.
(Unimportant) In late Feb 2019, I finished revising the paper and submitted the second version to JCIM for another round of review.
On Mar 21, 2019, my thesis had finished modification after successfully finishing the defence on Mar 13. So by this time, I had technically graduated.
(Unimportant) In early Apr 2019, the second round of JCIM review was returned. To our dismay, the original reviewer 1, who was the most supportive of the paper, was now changed to another reviewer (the new reviewer 2) who was much more critical.
1. Dr. Cherkasov suggested resubmitting to another journal, but you and I decided to give JCIM another try. We fixed every point raised by the reviewers, except one from the new reviewer 2, who essentially asked us to develop a whole new method and write another paper, which we obviously wouldn't do.
2. You suggested this would be our last attempt with JCIM.
(Unimportant) In early May 2019, we submitted the third version of the paper to JCIM.
(Unimportant) In late July 2019, we were disappointed to know the reviewer 2 of the paper was adamant and it seems getting the paper accepted by JCIM became unlikely. Dr. Cherkasov suggested re-submitting the paper to Molecular Informatics.
(Unimportant) In mid Aug 2019, I submitted the paper to Molecular Informatics (will be referred to as "MolInf" later in this email).
On Oct 18, 2019, I received the reviewers' feedback from MolInf. There were lots of comments, and overall I find it a bit discouraging.
On Oct 23, 2019, you gave some feedback and hoped I could address these comments and re-submit.
On Oct 27, 2019, I replied to you and all the other authors, explaining what I thought about the reviewer feedback, and what I thought could be done, and seeking your suggestions. It never got any reply from any of you. I felt discouraged to continue working on it.
1. This was the last email that we were actively discussing real work to get this paper published.
In March 2020, I sent another email to you in a desperate attempt to recoup my owed funding for the 2017~18 academic year. You again used the acceptance of the paper as a condition to release this remaining funding to me. Upon seeing this I kinda realized I cannot get it back from you without escalating it to legal action.
1. In effect, I was never able to get the remaining funding (with a principal value of 6430.72) from you to this day.
In June 2020, you collaborated with Terramera to win the Innovate BC award, which was 300K in this project. By this time you already had some lab members regularly working for Terramera for a long period of time, and your lab benefited from the funding that Terramera provided, or so I assume. All of this collaboration was possible because I first applied for their position using my own connections.
(Unimportant) In June 2020, I wrote an email to you explaining the unfortunate turnaround of events surrounding choosing my Master's thesis research topic back on May 16, 2017. That is one of the things you disappointed me, and I truly regret I wasn't more opinionated and aggressive. You acknowledged that if we indeed chose the path that I favored (i.e., working on Variational Autoencoder with Jason Rolfe and Zac), it might have been better for me.
As of Oct 2022, the PADME paper now has a citation count of 63 in its arXiv version, 9 in the SFU library version. I wouldn't say it's bad, compared with other papers from other students.

Now with the knowledge of the events leading to this claim, let's examine what laws you have breached.

How you have breached the laws

You seem to have violated the Contract Law. And yes, Contract Law applies to university offer letters. Note that below may not be an exhaustive list and I reserve the right to accuse you of other misconducts if applicable, should we go to court proceedings.

Misrepresentation: you concealed an important piece of info, namely the imminent termination of the MADD-Gen program, when you were trying to recruit me and sending me the offer letter. So basically, you deceived me into signing that offer letter. This constitutes Misrepresentation in the Contract Law. The deceived party, namely me, will be favored and compensated in an arbitration or trial.
Material breach of contract: Based on my offer letter, relevant university and departmental rules and regulations, and my performance during my Master's studies, I am entitled to receive my funding amount in full. Why? Let me explain:
Here is the original wording from my departmental offer letter: "Your MADD-Gen MSc fellowship is in the amount of at least $21000 per year for a minimum of 2 years, contingent upon your satisfactory progress towards all requirements of the School of Computing Science, as well as the MADD-Gen graduate fellowship program." This statement invites several questions.
1. What constitutes "satisfactory progress" for the School of CS?
  1. Satisfactory progress is stringently defined in SFU's Graduate General Regulations for 2016 Fall term.
    1. Satisfactory progress means the progress is not Unsatisfactory. In the link above, you can see that Unsatisfactory progress basically means "you might need to withdraw". A graduate student is deemed as having unsatisfactory progress if you have cGPA below 3.0 at some point, or is deemed as unsatisfactory by the supervisory committee, where the supervisory committee or the chair of the graduate program committee shall make a written report to the graduate program committee, and provide a copy to the student. The graduate program committee shall consider whether the student’s progress has been satisfactory.
    2. The above never happened to me: My cGPA never fell below 4.0, and the graduate program committee never informed me of any "unsatisfactory progress".
    3. The School of Computing Science doesn't require a thesis-based Master student's thesis to be accepted or published at peer-reviewed journals/conferences to constitute "satisfactory progress".
    4. The guideline for graduation time for Master students is within 9 semesters, while I graduated within 8 (2 years + 2 terms). So no issue here.
    5. So, the general regulation says I had satisfactory progress, and the department (School) doesn't say otherwise, then naturally, I had satisfactory progress during my Master's studies w.r.t. the requirements of the School of CS.
  2. So why am I using the 2016 Fall regulations as the criteria to determine satisfactory progress?
    1. The 2016~17 academic year SFU Grad handbook (see the relevant section of the handbook in the attachment) lists some terms and conditions that apply to graduate students. It says "the Policies and regulations set out in the SFU Calendar for the term (i.e. semester) in which you begin your program at Simon Fraser University will be the Calendar under which you are governed for the duration of your program." I enrolled in Fall 2016.
2. So am I deemed as having "satisfactory progress" based on the requirements of the MADD-Gen program?
  1. I cannot access the MADD-Gen program requirements now since the program has long gone, but I believe the answer is yes. If I remember correctly, MADD-Gen doesn't require a student to publish a paper to be considered as having "satisfactory progress".
  2. In fact, the MADD-Gen program requirements might be irrelevant after all.
    1. I was the deceived party in signing the offer letter, so I am the favored party in a court trial: more lenient terms might apply.
    2. Even if more lenient terms don't apply to me though I am deceived, since the MADD-Gen program got cancelled, let's revisit a quote from the graduate handbook: "Should the academic program requirements change during your degree, those requirements which are most beneficial to you will apply."
      1. In this scenario, the MADD-Gen program got cancelled, and I don't need to fulfill the requirements of the MADD-Gen program anymore, which is the most beneficial requirement to me.
      2. In turn, this means "satisfactory progress" towards the requirement of the School of CS alone, constitutes the sole condition for me to get the fellowship "in the amount of at least $21000 per year for a minimum of 2 years" as outlined in the departmental offer letter. And I've shown you that I already satisfied the requirements of "satisfactory progress" laid out by the School (or, "department").
3. What is the fair amount I should receive in each academic year?
  1. The offer letter specified at least $21000 per year for a minimum of 2 years, but didn't mention the maximum amount. Relevant university regulations specified that it cannot exceed 50,000 per year.
  2. Remember I was the deceived party in the contract so I might be entitled to more compensation.
  3. MADD-Gen Fellowship doesn't require anything other than satisfactory progress.
    1. In my first academic year, I received only 10,927 CAD MADD-Gen fellowship, while the Graduate Fellowship for incoming students (6,700 once only) isn't related to MADD-Gen, it's not included in the departmental offer letter and should be considered an add-on, rather than a part of the promise. This means my first year is 10,073 CAD (21000 - 10927) short of the promise. As for TAship, it was my salary from labour and shouldn't be included in the funding promise of a minimum 21000 per year.
    2. In my second academic year, I actively applied for that 1,000 CAD scholarship, which isn't related to the MADD-Gen fellowship either, so it should not count. As for the 7000 that Dr. Cherkasov gave me, I'm doing you a favor by considering it as a fellowship. So the second year is 21000 - 7000 = 14000 CAD short of the promise.
    3. So in total, if we adopt this calculation method, you should pay me 10,073 + 14,000 = 24,073 CAD as principal, plus the interest accumulated over all those years, to fulfill the actual promise. And it hasn't included the 6,500 CAD additional fellowship that, as you suggested in an email in March 2016, MADD-Gen students are likely to receive each year under the program (separate from the Graduate Fellowship for all incoming students), my mental damage from being deceived and mistreated by you over all these years, and my missed wages due to delayed graduation. Even this 24,073 CAD principal amount claim is, in fact, quite reasonable, if not lenient to you. All these numbers are still well within the 50,000 annual cap.
    4. As for my third year, I earned 15,000 CAD through the internship and this doesn't belong to any promises. To prove my point, the departmental offer letter says, "you can expect continued funding beyond the initial 2 years, subject to funding availability and your satisfactory progress towards your degree." So don't think the money I earned in the internship can reduce your outstanding balance owed to me in any way.
    5. I'm being very considerate and reasonable and I won't even use this already lenient amount (24,073) if we are to settle this privately. However, I reserve the right to claim these amounts, and perhaps more, if we escalate or eventually go to court proceedings.
  4. Now, if you agree to settle this between the two of us without escalation, I am giving you a VERY favourable way of calculation. In this calculation, the principal amount you owe me will be 42000 - 35569.28 = 6430.72 CAD. Considering the interest accumulated from Sept 1 2018 (the first day of 2018 ~ 2019 academic year) all the way to now (Oct 11 2022), it will result in 6739 CAD. See BC Court order interest rates and BC Court order interest act.
  5. I'm giving you a huge favor by claiming this very low amount, but please don't squander my goodwill. If we cannot resolve this quickly and amicably, it escalates and eventually goes to court, I can claim the higher amount, perhaps also mental damages and missed wage income due to delayed graduation and other compensations, which will likely no longer be a Small Claims Court case, but qualifies for BC Supreme Court.
Unfairness of bargain: Unconscionability. You might think you established a new, legally-binding contract with me by requiring me to get the paper accepted before releasing the fund, and I agreed. This is not true. You had huge power over me by deciding whether I could graduate on time, or graduate at all, and you took advantage of this power to deny me my rightful claim. I wasn't even bold enough to ask for mediation from the department because I didn't want to offend you, resulting in me switching supervisors or changing track into a course-based master, which would likely incur higher costs to me, both monetarily and in terms of time, and probably lost job opportunity. This constitutes Unconscionability and is one of the factors that damages, if not completely nullifies, the legality of a contract, because a party's bargaining power is severely weakened. Besides, I was the deceived party all along and am entitled to be ruled more favourably, should a court proceeding take place. Your "contract" is extremely questionable, if not outright illegal, in this context.

Despite these violations of laws, I'm still very nice and cooperative towards you.

How I'm being really nice and cooperative towards you

Here are the ways where I'm being really nice to you, including many compromises and sacrifices I have made and am making.

As I mentioned, I'm using a calculation method very favourable to you: under this method, my principal amount is not 24,073 (for two years), not 13,000 (for 2nd year only), only 6430.72 (a fraction of 2nd year), and certainly doesn't include the mental damage and loss of wages which you might be held responsible for. I hope you understand the sacrifices I made and cooperate. You'll unlikely see such favourable terms should we escalate this issue (which could eventually lead to court proceedings), and I reserve the right to claim these higher amounts in such cases.
When I was living a miserably poor life back in 2017~2019, I didn't push you too hard to give me the funding. I was considerate and understood that you might be having problems with the grant application. I was hoping to get through this harsh time together with you and finally see money coming through.
1. But it turned out that you never cared. Company A gave you a lot of money and you didn't even spend a dime of it on me, and you got this funding well before I graduated.
2. And you knew my financial situation all along.
3. My poverty damaged my mental health, induced a higher level of "learned helplessness" which I already had due to an unfortunate upbringing, and negatively impacted my love life.
4. But even with all this, I'm not holding a strong grudge and holding you responsible for my hardship and asking for compensation for the damage you caused or contributed to. I'm only asking for a very low amount of the money I should've been entitled to in the first place, using a calculation method in your favour. I might increase my claim if we end up escalating.
I didn't fail you. As of mid Oct 2022, the PADME paper (4-year old) now has a citation count of 63 in its arXiv version, 9 in the SFU library version, which is quite decent.
1. I think I lived up to my role as your student and this paper has become another asset in your academic career.
In the timeline section, you can see several occasions where you were being inconsiderate, disrespectful, and sometimes borderline rude towards me, and these listed events are actually not exhaustive. However, I'm not asking you for compensation due to these behaviors, or depicting you as a very bad person. Instead, in this email, I truthfully described what you did well and gave them a fair appraisal. Because I know people have shortcomings and limitations and you're not supposed to be a perfect man (just like I'm not either), and I'm fine with that.
Similarly applies to the fact that you forget things a LOT (which might be inevitable for a person of your age) and you turned out not to be the genius I initially envisioned. But just like I'm not a perfect student, I don't ask you to be a perfect supervisor; your achievements and sustained excellence despite these disadvantages are truly marvelous, which also serves as a testament to the power of being consistent and focusing your energy on the most important things: true geniuses are extremely rare, but if you do simple things flawlessly consistently and have excellence as a habit, you will be able to achieve so much and become a genius in other people's eyes. I'm being really nice and appreciative here.
1. Since you clearly know the most important things to do, I believe you'll make the right choice w.r.t. this claim.
I helped bridge you to Terramera, which gave you the opportunity to make bigger impacts and have more funding.
For this email, I initially planned to add some departmental leadership to the recipient list to get departmental mediation, but I decided to attempt settling this with you directly without them, to prevent some peer pressure for you.
I finished this email during the Thanksgiving long weekend, but I wanted you to have a good weekend and especially a good Thanksgiving, which means a lot to a devout Christian like you, so I scheduled this email to be sent on the next business day after Thanksgiving.

Now that you know how nice I am towards you, I'm making my demands, which I hope you will understand and cooperate.

My Demands

I'm making some very reasonable demands. Since I've already made so many compromises and been so nice to you as mentioned above, I don't accept any negotiation on any of the demands in the numbered list below.

If you don't cooperate, or try to negotiate these non-negotiable terms, or are intentionally stalling for time as a reasonable person will suspect, I'll immediately escalate, and when I deem appropriate, update you of the escalation.

The first steps of escalation means seeking mediation from entities that are generally believed to exist for public well-being, or in other words, the common good, but it is unlikely to result in more favourable terms for you, partly because I'll propose less favourable terms for you. If these step(s) of escalation don't resolve the issue, a court proceeding will be pursued. But please keep in mind that I reserve the right to directly escalate to court proceedings without first seeking mediation.

Please pay me the amount of at least 6739 CAD in full, in one lump-sum payment, at your earliest convenience.
1. Because the interest will accumulate over time, I'll add the newly incurred interest to the 6739 CAD claim amount if a long enough period of time has passed without the payment being made. I will give you warnings before I increase the claim amount for such cases. If any terms/subterms within this numbered list aren't satisfied, the clock keeps ticking and I will, in principle, properly add the interest as time passes, which results in higher claim amounts.
2. The type of this funding must be either RAship, scholarship, fellowship, or other types of financial aid that a university will reasonably provide its full-time graduate students. I will not accept special types of funding that might incur income tax obligations and I'll have to waste time proving myself innocent to CRA.
3. The associated funding letter MUST specify that the funding is to pay me for 2017~2018 academic year. If specific starting and ending dates are used, these dates MUST BE between Jan 1 2018, and Aug 31 2018. This, together with the point above, is to avoid my having income tax issues.
Upon the mutually satisfied resolution of this claim, I'll drop the charges on you on this specific matter, but I retain my other rights. In particular, I won't sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) regarding the information mentioned in this email: I don't exchange my freedom of speech for the funding that I was entitled to from the beginning. But at the same time, I'll respect your legitimate privacy. I also promise I won't make false/distorted statements about you.
There will be no illegal retaliation towards me in any form, anywhere, either directly from you or indirectly.

How I expect you to respond to this email and request

This is a subsection of "My Demands". The terms in the numbered list below are mostly non-negotiable.

I expect you to reply to this email (or any other way successfully informing me that you received this email) within 48 natural hours of me sending this email. This reply can be brief and simple. Otherwise, I'll send email(s) to push you to read it.
No matter what happens (whether it took you several days to see this email, whether it ended up in the trash folder etc), if, within the next 11 business days AT MOST (INCLUDING the day that this email is sent), you don't give me the confidence, through substantial action, that you will cooperate with my demands and make real progress towards resolving this claim, I will escalate this issue to aforementioned entities for mediation, or even court proceeding.
1. Stalling doesn't work. If you try to say something to buy more time, the clock keeps ticking and I will escalate when I lose confidence or when 11 business days are reached, whichever is earlier.
2. Deception from your side will be a deal-breaker.
3. I can grant, decline, or revoke extensions to this waiting period based on any reasonable guesses and doubts.
4. This does not mean that you MUST settle this case within at most 11 business days, but I do hope so. The amount is small and the case is simple.
5. I suggest you work on it and resolve it ASAP, in everyone's best interest.
6. Even if you make me confident at first, I can always escalate if I lose confidence later on, when the situation makes a person reasonably doubt the possibility of your satisfying my demands within a reasonable timeframe.
In the process, I prefer having information exchange through email or instant messaging softwares, less so for video/audio conferencing or phone calls, and even less so for in-person meetings.
Once escalated, I'll decide on a new response/resolution speed that I deem appropriate, if applicable.

Questions you may have

Q: How can you escalate it to court proceedings? It's passed the 2-year limitation period.
A: Due to COVID, there was a 1-year suspension of the limitation period from March 2020 to March 2021, and our last communication w.r.t. this issue was in Mar 2020. So now this case is still well within this period.
Q: What if I turn a blind eye to this email?
A: Then I will escalate faster and propose terms much less favourable to you.
Q: Do you have evidence for the things you mentioned?
A: Yes, for most of them, especially the important ones. I have a pretty good document/email management habits, and I sometimes proactively gather evidence. All of the evidence was obtained legally. For some of the things I mentioned in the email, I don't have the evidence on hand, but usually it can be easily inferred based on publicly available info, or some info that you or other entities will need to provide upon receiving a subpoena (if a subpoena is ever needed), like the status of the MADD-Gen program at the beginning of 2016.
Q: Will you illegally harm me in any way?
A: No. I will resolve this issue with completely legal approaches. No illegal actions will be pursued by me, either directly or indirectly, towards either you or your related individuals/entities.
Q: You now have a pretty good job with a very decent salary. Why do you still want to start this claim for a relatively underwhelming amount of money? It seems so insignificant to you.
A: First, how much money I earn is irrelevant to this case, your legal violations should be punished, and my success doesn't pardon you.
Money is an important aspect of this case, but not the most important. Otherwise I would be claiming more than 24,073 CAD from the beginning. The purpose is to show you that you cannot harm people without any repercussions, and hopefully deter you from such misconducts in the future. I see it as a way to not only get justice for myself, but also make the world a better place. For me, not only economic value is value; spiritual and psychological value is equally important, if not more important. I decided that working on this claim is the best use of my time and no one will have this decision swayed.
Q: Why should I cooperate?
A: Because it's in everyone's best interest, especially yours. I'm giving you very reasonable and favourable terms which you might not get in subsequent stages along the escalation path. This holds true even though I'm not going to sign the NDA with you. Take the opportunity.
Q: I can offer you a higher amount than you asked, will you sign an NDA with me?
A: No. NDA is a non-negotiable term no matter the amount you're willing to offer me. Besides, I don't think such an NDA will be perfectly legal or in the public interest.
Q: Why can't you simply accept the 6430.72 CAD principal amount to settle this case?
A: I'm already doing you a huge favor by asking for such a low amount of 6739, as already explained in the email. The interest calculation method I used is completely reasonable and legal. It's time for you to make your compromise, I'll not back down on this. If you attempt to negotiate, I'll decline your request and escalate, no matter whether the 11 business day deadline I set has been reached or not.
Q: If this issue is so important to you, why did you wait for so long before actually sending this email?
A: Because of all kinds of reasons. Now multiple factors have worked together in my favor for me to take the initiative and solve this historical issue. This actually implies that there might have been other students having similar (though perhaps less severe) issues with you, but the factors haven't worked in their favor to prompt them to confront you courageously. You should be grateful that I gave you so much time and opportunities to fix your wrongdoing, and am even giving you generous terms right now. You should also be grateful that you got away with your wrongdoings (if any) to other people. But it doesn't mean you're entitled to do the wrong things. Law is a very low version of moral standard. Even if you don't breach the laws, you might still be doing something wrong.
Q: Why do you think you'll win if an arbitration or court proceeding takes place?
A: I've explained how you've breached the laws. And I'm giving you very reasonable and favourable terms now. If you turn them down and go to court, the judge will think you're greedy in turning down reasonable settlement solutions, ending up wasting public resources and everyone's time, which means the ruling will not be in your favor.
Q: Will you abandon this claim if I cooperate?
A: Yes. If you truly cooperate, I will abandon this claim, and I will not ask for the higher principal amounts (24,073, 13,000, etc, mentioned in this email) for this case. That said, I won't forgo any other rights.
Q: Why don't you reflect upon yourself and realize how poorly you performed and how reasonable I have already been towards you? You deserve this.
A: I'm sorry if you think this way. Although I'm definitely imperfect, I don't agree that I performed that poorly to deserve such treatment. And for things you truly did well, I do acknowledge them and always give them fair appraisal, within or outside of this email, and I am and will forever be grateful for the truly good things you did for me and humankind. However, I cannot back down on some principles; it's not only for my own interest, but for the interest of society. It's you violating the law, not me.
Besides, many professors will provide their students with assistance in applying for departmental financial aids/scholarships, etc., if they didn't have the funding themselves. You did not provide similar help here. Perhaps forcing me to be in utmost poverty to incentivize me to get the paper published was in your best interest, which dictated how you'd handle the situation. However, putting me in such man-made poverty negatively affected my mental health, and quite likely, my research output.
Q: I don't treat other students like this, only you.
A: First I doubt it. Also, even if it's true, I only need to speak for myself. You violated the law in my case and that suffices for me to write this email or take any ensuing legal actions if you don't cooperate.
Q: Do other people know about it?
A: Yes, I do have several friends who are aware of the situation between us and are updated on the development, but they certainly won't harm you in any way w.r.t. this issue.
Q: Are there accompanying emails to this one?
A: Yes, there are two of them. They're sent to you at almost the same time.
Q: What is your expected timeframe to get this claim resolved?
A: I cannot tell you. I can tell you it is long enough to be reasonable, but short enough to prevent you from using stalling tactics. I may or may not give you warnings before my patience runs out.

I hope to hear from you very soon and let's get this settled!

Best Regards,
Anton (Qingyuan) Feng

Martin's reply

This reply was received on Oct 12 at 14:44. Prior to this reply, I sent multiple emails to Martin to push him to reply me.

Dear Qingyuan,

You deserve the financial support at the promised level for the period of time when you were in good standing. I thought that we had reviewed this carefully long time ago before your graduation, but we can review it again now.

As basis for our review, we need your admission letter with your funding promise (the promises have been changing in the course of the years) and the time from which you were no longer in good standing. Can you provide me these two pieces of information?

Best,
Martin Ester

My reply

I immediately replied to Martin after getting his email. This reply was sent on Oct 12 at 15:02, just 18 minutes after Martin’s reply. Other emails in our communication, including how we reached the agreement, are omitted from this article.

Hi Dr. Ester,

It's great to hear back from you.

I've explained the situation very clearly in my original email, you just need to read it more carefully. And in that email's attachment you can find the departmental offer letter which includes the funding promise, which is a minimum of 21000 per year. I believe it's legally binding throughout my degree, since I didn't drop out or something like that.

And keep in mind that you deceived me into signing this offer letter in the first place by committing misrepresentation, and I'll be ruled more favourably in a court proceeding due to this simple fact of deception. "Funding promise changing over the years" is an invalid argument in the court in this case.

Everything is explained in my original email, I urge you to read it carefully. I have highlighted the relevant info in the original email with different fonts and colors.

And, "satisfactory progress" is a terminology stringently defined in SFU's graduate regulations. That I also explained in the original email. I was never deemed as having unsatisfactory progress based on that regulation. All of which I explained very clearly and in detail. If "satisfactory progress" is what you mean by "good standing", then "no longer in good standing" doesn't apply to me.

The clock keeps ticking and I urge you to read my original email carefully, including its attachments. If you claim some documents/info that I've already sent you, that won't buy you more time; in fact, it's a waste of our time: you have to spend some time typing the words, I have to spend time reading it and typing a reply. While in fact, all you need to do is to read my original email more carefully.

I have all the evidence to convict you in a trial.

All the info in this email is already contained in my original email.

Please remember that the current terms are already in your favour and I don't accept negotiations on any of the non-negotiable terms I laid out in the original email.

Wish you make the right decision ASAP. And wish you are having a great day.

Regards,
Qingyuan Feng