Divisional Court Dismisses Appeal in Case Concerning Working Notice Being Inappropriate for Employees on Disability Leave

On November 24, 2017, in a post titled, Working Notice Inappropriate for Employees on Disability Leave, I blogged about the decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Hood, J.) in McLeod v. 1274458 Ontario Inc., 2017 ONSC 4073.

As the title of that post suggests, at that time, the Superior Court had found that a period of working notice did not ‘count’ with respect to an employee absent from employment on disability leave.

On March 19, 2018, a three-member bench of the Divisional Court (Swinton, Sachs and Corthorn JJ.) dismissed the employer’s appeal: McLeod v. 1274458 Ontario Inc. o/a Frontier Sales Limited, 2018 ONSC 1866 (CanLII).

Claiming Constructive Dismissal as an Independent Contractor

Can independent contractors claim damages for constructive dismissal? In a decision released March 7, 2018 by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Barresi v Jones Lang LaSalle Real Estate Services, Inc., 2018 ONSC 837, the answer to that question was essentially yes.

Twenty-Six Months’ Notice Awarded to Employees Who Rejected Offer of Continued Employment

Is an employee who is slated to lose his or her employment as a result of the sale of part of his or her company required to accept an offer of employment from the purchaser, if that offer of employment is on substantially less favourable terms?

If the employee reasonably rejects that offer, then what is the maximum amount of ‘severance’ to which a wrongfully dismissed employee can be entitled? While many will tell you that 24 months is the most a court will ever award for reasonable notice, as this blog has noted on more than one occasion, see e.g. What is the Maximum Amount of Reasonable Notice Under Ontario Law? and Is Twenty-Six the new Twenty-Four? Taking the 'Cap' off the Limit on Reasonable Notice, and as the Honourable Justice Lois Roberts (now of the Court of Appeal for Ontario) said in the case of Hussain v. Suzuki (2011), 209 A.C.W.S. (3d) 101 (ON SC):

There is no cap on the amount of reasonable notice of employment termination to which an employee may be entitled.

On February 20, 2018, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in its decision in Dussault v. Imperial Oil Limited, 2018 ONSC 1168, once again confirmed that there is no such thing as a “hard cap” at 24 months and took a good, hard look at the obligations of an employee to mitigate his or her damages by accepting a substantially less lucrative offer of employment from the purchaser in an asset sale arrangement.

Lack of Clear Warning Voids Termination Provision

Must an employer provide its employees with a clear warning that it intends to provide no more than the minimum amount of notice prescribed by the Employment Standards Act, 2000 in order to create a legally binding employment contract?

Does the failure to provide a clear warning to an employee that her employment may be terminated upon the provision of no more than the minimum amount of notice prescribed by the Employment Standards Act, 2000 create an ambiguity voiding the contractual termination provision?

In a decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sitting at Ottawa, released February 6, 2018, Bergeron v. Movati Athletic (Group) Inc., 2018 ONSC 885, the Honourable Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin said that the answer to those questions is “yes.”

Family Day in Ontario - Why Some Employees Don’t Have the Day Off

Why is my daycare closed if I have to go to work? Perhaps nowhere else in Ontario is the effect federalism felt more acutely than in Ottawa. According to statistics from the City of Ottawa, a full 18.2% of the city’s GDP is derived from the federal public service; second only to high tech.

Practically speaking, what this means is that on the third Monday of every February, federal public servants are expected to be at work while their daycares shutter their doors. So what gives?

Workplace Harassment “Arises From” but does not “Relate To” Employment

Does workplace harassment simply “arise from and in the course of” an employee’s employment, or does it actually “relate to” that employment?

That question, as incredibly pedantic as it may appear, was of material consequence to a decision of the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board issued January 23, 2018: OPSEU and Ontario (Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services) (Rosati), Re, 2018 CarswellOnt 1017.

In short, the answer to that question drove the analysis as to whether a claim for workplace harassment was compensable pursuant to the newly revised provisions of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997.

Employers May Not Make Changes to Terms of Employment During Working Notice Period

In the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” the spin doctors hired to get the President re-elected release an ad campaign with the slogan “Never change horses in mid-stream.” That idiom serves as a powerful and important reminder for employers that might seek to change the terms of an employee’s employment during a period of so-called “working notice.”

In a short decision released by the Court of Appeal for Ontario, Nufrio v. Allstate Insurance Company of Canada, 2017 ONCA 948 (CanLII), Ontario’s top court reinforced this principle.