The Chartwell Chronicles: Employment Law
Managing the Size and Structure of Your Post-Pandemic Workforce
#WorkforceWednesday: OSHA ETS on Hold, Retaliation Claims Increase, "Vaccination Ambassadors" - Employment Law This Week®
In Aldergrove Duty Free Shop Ltd. v. MacCallum, 2024 BCCA 28, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia (BCCA) dismissed an employer’s appeal when it agreed with the lower court that the employer could not use the frustration...more
In Gannon v. Kinsdale Carriers, 2024 ONSC 1060, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice denied common law reasonable notice to an employee who was wrongfully dismissed from her employment on the basis that she failed to...more
Back in April we examined the court’s decision in Boldt v. Black & Veatch, which dismissed a subcontractor’s counterclaim for wrongful termination on a 60-turbine wind farm project. As you may recall, the subcontractor hired...more
In Khangura v Lumberwest Building Supplies Inc., 2023 BCSC 1053, the Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed an employee’s claim that he was entitled to damages because he had been wrongfully dismissed without cause. The...more
In Teljeur v Aurora Hotel Group, 2023 ONSC 1324, a wrongful dismissal case, the court awarded the plaintiff-employee seven months’ damages for reasonable notice, and $15,000 in moral damages due to the employer’s bad-faith...more
The Alberta Court of Appeal determined that Canada Emergency Response Benefit (“CERB”) payments are not deductible from wrongful dismissal damages, following an emerging trend from other jurisdictions....more
The Alberta Court of Appeal (ABCA) recently addressed an increasingly common question—whether financial support provided under the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) program to workers directly affected by COVID-19...more
The National Labor Relations Board announced Tuesday that it was expressly expanding the scope of its traditional “make whole” remedy to require employers to compensate wrongfully terminated employees for all “direct or...more
First Canadian Appellate Court determines that Canada Emergency Response Benefits (“CERB”) payments are not deductible from wrongful dismissal damages. In Yates v Langley Motor Sport Centre Ltd., the British Columbia...more
In Yates v. Langley Motor Sport Centre Ltd., 2022 BCCA 398, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia (BCCA) decided that Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) payments should not be deducted from damage awards for wrongful...more
In McCharles v Jaco Line Contractors Ltd., 2022 AHRC 115, an employee alleged that her employer discriminated against her on the basis of gender contrary to the Alberta Human Rights Act (AHRA) when it terminated her...more
The recent decision of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, Wisser v CEM International Management Consultants Ltd., 2022 ABQB 414, determined that the oppression remedy under the Alberta Business Corporations Act (“ABCA”),...more
In Wisser v CEM International Management Consultants Ltd, 2022 ABQB 414 (CEM International), the court used the oppression remedy to hold directors of a corporation personally liable for damages for wrongful dismissal after...more
A recent wrongful dismissal opinion from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice weighed the impact of the pandemic and alleged failure to mitigate when deciding how much reasonable notice damages were owed the plaintiff. In...more
In a recent case issued by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico (“the Court”), the Court addressed the standard and level of proof that must be presented by employers when raising as an affirmative defense a corporate...more
In Reotech Construction Ltd. v Snider, 2022 BCSC 317 (Reotech), the Supreme Court of British Columbia found that the trial court erred when it did not deduct the employee’s $9,000 Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)...more
In Hong Kong, an implied duty of mutual trust and confidence (“Duty”) exists between an employer and an employee. This duty requires that an employer shall not “without reasonable and proper cause, conduct itself in a manner...more
In Hucsko v. A.O. Smith Enterprises Limited, 2021 ONCA 728 (A.O. Smith), a long-term senior employee’s co-worker alleged that the employee sexually harassed her. After a workplace investigation that determined the co-worker’s...more
With a newly minted Democratic majority on the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”), the General Counsel of the NLRB, who directs enforcement of federal labor law, has ordered her staff to seek broad remedies - many of...more
In a wrongful dismissal claim in Ontario, it is up to the employer to prove that employees failed to mitigate their damages and that had they taken reasonable steps to do so, they would have likely obtained equivalent or...more
To date, few decisions in Canada have considered whether the amount of the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) employees receive after their job termination should be deducted from their damages in lieu of common law...more
In Kim v. BT Express Freight Systems (2020), 317 A.C.W.S. (3d) 255, Ontario’s Superior Court confirmed that an employer may be liable for damages if it withdraws an accepted offer of employment or terminates employment...more
Whether a wrongfully dismissed employee is entitled to damages as compensation for the value of incentives that would have vested during the reasonable notice period is frequently litigated in Canada....more
Prior to the advent of social media and especially the #MeToo movement, employers were generally comfortable drawing a bright line between what employees did on their own time and workplace misconduct. ...more
Employers in Ontario will likely welcome the decision in Katz et al. v. Clarke, 2019 ONSC 2188 (Divisional Court), which addressed the scope of the duty to accommodate in the event of an employee’s permanent disability. ...more