A dismissal from employment is rarely pleasant for anyone involved. Frustration, anxiety and hurt feelings are all common by-products. But how do we assess whether an employee has suffered harm beyond the ordinary due to a poorly handled termination?
Q&A is a recurring series on the Vey Willetts LLP blog. The aim is to provide quick answers to questions we commonly encounter in our day-to-day practice of employment law. In this edition, we focus on how to navigate the loss of a job and ensure that you receive a fair severance package.
Vey Willetts lawyer Paul Willetts was quoted in the August 21, 2017 edition of the Ottawa Metro News. The article, "Be Warned, Job Seekers: There is Such a Thing as a Bad Reference", considers a recent Ontario court case in which the owner of a company provided a negative reference to a prospective employer for an employee that it had recently fired. The prospective employer relied on the negative reference and decided not to offer a job to the individual. Consequently, the individual sued for wrongful dismissal and defamation.
Vey Willetts LLP is pleased to announce the launch of the first Severance Pay Calculator tailored specifically for the needs of employees and businesses in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario.
The Ontario Court of Appeal recently released its decision in Brake v RJ-M2R Restaurant Inc. This is an important decision for employees and employers alike as it may potentially change the way in which Ontario courts assess a wrongfully dismissed employee’s mitigation efforts and their consequent entitlement to additional severance. Mitigation refers to the obligation of dismissed employees to look for alternate comparable employment. Feldman J.A.’s concurring reasons, in particular, suggest that where a dismissed employee accepts an inferior job, any earnings therein may not count as ‘mitigation income’.
Section 54 of the Ontario Employment Standards Act requires that employers in the province must provide either notice or pay in lieu of notice, up to a maximum of 8 weeks, if they dismiss an employee (except in cases of serious employee misconduct).
A recent decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal, Roberts v. Zoomermedia Limited, dealt with the unusual situation of a defendant employer arguing that its own contractual termination provision was unenforceable and thus the plaintiff employee was entitled to common law reasonable notice. Employees frequently challenge the enforceability of a termination provision to seek common law notice, however, it is rare that an employer would do the same.
Last month, The Advocates' Quarterly published an article by Vey Willetts' lawyer, Paul Willetts. Willetts' article, entitled "Punitive Damages in Morison v. Ergo-Industrial Seating: The New 'Wallace Bump'?", looks at whether the Ontario courts are increasingly using punitive damages as a vehicle to award former employee's compensation for "bad faith" employer conduct in dismissal, as aggravated damages (arguably the appropriate vehicle) are more difficult to attain.
