Can an employee sue her former supervisor for sexual harassment if she has signed a Full and Final Release in favour of her former employer?
In the case of Watson v. The Governing Council of the Salvation Army of Canada, 2018 ONSC 1066 (CanLII), the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that she might not be precluded by the release.
Can an employee sue her employer if she is sexually assaulted at work by a co-worker? In a decision by the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal (the “WSIAT”), Decision No. 3096/17, 2018 ONWSIAT 1563 (CanLII), the answer was once again, “not if the employee is entitled to WSIB benefits.”
It is a well-known fact that employers must provide their employees with “reasonable notice” of the termination of their employment. But, is there a qualitative component as to what is “reasonable”, in addition to a quantitative component?
In the case of Wood v. CTS of Canada Co., 2017 ONSC 5695, the Honourable Justice John R. Sproat, ruled that there was. Later, and for reasons reported as Wood v. CTS of Canada Co., 2018 ONCA 758, the Court of Appeal for Ontario agreed that not all notice periods are created equal.
Given all the other noise about what it takes to make a contractual termination clause legally binding, one can be forgiven for overlooking the most basic rule: The language used must be clear.
The contractual termination clause considered in the case of McMichael v The New Zealand & Australian Lamb Company, 2018 ONSC 5422 (CanLII), about which I recently blogged for other reasons in my post, Choice of Law Provisions: Application of the Ontario Employment Standards Act to International Employees, clearly demonstrates this most basic of rules.
Can an employer and employee agree by contract that the laws of Ontario, Canada will apply to terms of their employment relationship, even if: (a) the employee works and is physically situated in in Los Angeles, California; and (b) the company is a New Jersey company with its head office in the State of Connecticut?
If the answer to that question is “yes”, do / can the employment standards set out in the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000 apply to such an employee?
Those were some of the questions put to the Honourable Justice James F. Diamond of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in the case of McMichael v The New Zealand & Australian Lamb Company, 2018 ONSC 5422 (CanLII).
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: An employer attempts to limit, by employing a contractual termination clause, its obligation to provide notice of termination to no more than the statutory minimum amount prescribed by the provisions of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 and the employee alleges that such clause is void ab initio because it violates the strictures of such statute. In Burton v. Aronovitch McCauley Rollo LLP, 2018 ONSC 3018 (CanLII) the Ontario Superior Court of Justice once again had reason to examine such arguments.
In this case, however, the court considered all of the earlier decisions in Roden, Wood, and Nemeth.
May an employee who has resigned her position of employment by way of a notice of retirement later rescind her written notice of retirement? If so, under what conditions may she do so?
Those were the questions answered by the Honourable Justice Mark L. Edwards of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in English v. Manulife Financial Corporation, 2018 ONSC 5135 (CanLII)
