As an employer, understanding the legal framework surrounding employee leaves is crucial to mitigating legal risks and ensuring compliance with employment laws.
Employers may face challenges when making business decisions that impact employees on leave, including questions about whether termination is permissible during a leave of absence.Continue Reading Out of Sight, Out of Work? Important Considerations for Terminating on Leave
Underperformance can be a big issue for employers, especially in smaller organizations where every employee’s contribution matters.
There can be serious costs to the business. Before you terminate someone, you need to understand the legal framework in Ontario. Skipping the proper steps can expose your business to claims for wrongful dismissal, which can be even more expensive.Continue Reading Can I Terminate an Employee for Underperforming?
If you are a regular reader of our blog, you’ll already know that we’re big advocates of conducting regular audits on your employment contracts.
There are many good reasons for conducting regular audits, along with your legal counsel, but as many employers now know, the termination provision is of particular importance. Continue Reading Delivering on Your Promises: Aligning Contractual Commitments with Outcomes on Termination
Job abandonment typically occurs when an employee is absent without communicating with their employer for an extended period, leading the employer to conclude that the employee has voluntarily resigned. However, circumstances like medical emergencies or family crises may justify the absence, so employers should avoid jumping to conclusions.Continue Reading Out of Office… Forever? How to Handle Job Abandonment
Are you an employer using fixed-term employment contracts and wondering how to avoid costly legal pitfalls?
Ontario’s recent Steele v. City of Barrie decision provides key insights on how to use FTECs effectively, minimizing risks like paying out full contracts or unintentionally creating indefinite-term employees. Here’s what you need to know. Continue Reading Navigating Fixed-Term Contract Risks: Essential Lessons for Ontario Employers
In the world of employment law, terminations tend to steal the spotlight. But what about when the employee is the one ending the employment relationship?
Here is an overview of the law of resignation, and what employers need to know when they receive an employee’s “two weeks’ notice”. Continue Reading Employee Resignations: The Basics
Mitigation issues can save an employer months of termination pay and/or gut your termination case, depending on whether you are the employer or employee in a dispute.
But what exactly is mitigation? This post sets out the basics.
In Canadian employment law, mitigation refers to the legal obligation of an employee who
During 2023, we saw the Ontario Court of Appeal uphold two decisions awarding notice periods beyond what was believed to be the “24-month cap” at 27 and 30 months respectively.
In another recent Ontario decision, the Court awarded 5.5 months of pay in lieu of notice to an employee with only 5 months of service prior to dismissal, which is significantly higher than the “one month per year” rule of thumb. These decisions create uncertainty for employers given the wide range of potential liability arising from wrongful dismissal claims. Fortunately, there are proactive measures employers can take to avoid this liability. Continue Reading Uncertainty on Both Ends of the Common Law Notice Spectrum
Employees suing former employers for wrongful dismissal damages are obligated to “mitigate” their damages, and a failure to do so may lessen the damages awarded by a Court. In Part 1 of this series, we provided a general overview of the employee’s duty to mitigate. In Part 2, we are delving into specific mitigation issues: whether an employee is required to seek out lower paying positions after an unsuccessful period of searching for a more comparable role; whether job titles of the positions applied for matter; and how employers meet the onus of showing an employee has not met their duty to mitigate. These questions were answered by the Ontario Court of Appeal in Lake v. La Presse, 2022 ONCA 742. Note that the decision discussed here overturned Lake v. La Presse (2018) Inc., 2021 ONSC 3506, which we covered in a previous blog post. Continue Reading Mitigation Part 2: No Requirement to Search for Less Comparable Positions Over Time
The duty to mitigate is one of the few employee obligations in a wrongful dismissal dispute, and it can reduce a defendant employer’s liability significantly.
What is the Duty to Mitigate?
The duty to mitigate requires an employee to take reasonable steps to secure comparable employment after they have been wrongfully dismissed. When an employer wrongfully dismisses an employee, unless there is enforceable contract language to the contrary, the employee is entitled to damages for pay in lieu of common law reasonable notice. Continue Reading Mitigation Part 1: What is the Duty to Mitigate in Claims of Wrongful Dismissal?