Cruelty during termination is expensive
May became an employee of a new airline flying from British Columbia to China in 2011. Her responsibilities were to obtain customers and hire and supervise staff at the Vancouver branch.
In 2018, a new general manager took away May’s supervisory responsibilities. He also told her she was to have no further contact with old accounts and was to focus only on bringing in new ones.
In January 2020, she was pulled into a meeting with managers. She was told the meeting was being recorded, she was being placed on immediate administrative leave and she was under investigation. No details of the reasons for this were provided. She was required to immediately return all documents, ID, passwords and keys and take her personal belongings and leave the building. Other staff searched her belongings before she was allowed to take them. May thought she had been doing a good job and was stunned by this turn of events. She was in a state of panic and anxiety in the meeting and was humiliated and shocked. At home she had trouble talking, eating and sleeping. Over the next week she received a number of emails from her employer demanding the return of documents she did not have and threatening to search her home. Within a week she was put on an urgent waiting list by her family doctor to see a psychiatrist and prescribed antidepressant medication. When the employer demanded soon after that she attend a meeting she told them she was ill and provided her doctor’s note.
Even though the note clearly said May had to be off work due to illness, the employer claimed all the note said was she had seen a doctor. They told her that if she did not come to the meeting she would be giving up her job. May told them she was ill, needed to see a psychiatrist and could not attend. She said she would attend the meeting after she had seen the psychiatrist. Within a few days the employer sent a letter terminating her employment for cause, alleging that she had copied and sent out confidential employer documents to third parties.
The next day May saw the psychiatrist and was diagnosed with acute stress and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. She was told not to work for two months. A month later the employer sent another letter demanding again that May return confidential documents she did not have. It said that their investigation had uncovered financial irregularities involving her employment. May’s poor mental health persisted. She believed that without the antidepressants she would have become suicidal. She tried to find work but discovered that none of the agencies she had worked with would give her a reference because the employer had told everyone she had been fired.
May sued for wrongful dismissal and even though she only worked for the employer for nine years, she was awarded 20 months’ pay.
May also sued for aggravated damages, which are awarded when an employer has breached its duty of good faith and fair dealing in the manner of dismissal and the employee has suffered direct damages as a result. That can include situations in which the employer was untruthful, misleading or unduly insensitive in the course of dismissal or attacked the employee’s reputation. The employee has to prove something beyond just the normal distress and hurt feelings that invariably follow a termination. May was awarded $35,000 in aggravated damages.
She also sued for punitive damages, which are intended to punish the employer for egregious or outrageous behaviour. The punitive damages are meant to achieve retribution, denunciation and deterrence. She was awarded $100,000 in punitive damages as well as her legal costs. Before anyone gets too excited about this case, I have to tell you that this was a default judgment. That means the employer never filed a statement of defence and was not at the trial. It turns out the employer had already been sued by two other employees for similar outrageous behaviour and lost. An internet search does not indicate any bankruptcy. In my experience the only time an employer does not defend a lawsuit is when they have gone out of business. Perhaps this employer was tired of losing wrongful dismissal suits and gave up. The result, however, was that the judge only heard May’s side of the story. It is likely that the employer had absolutely no evidence of May breaching confidentiality or being involved in financial irregularities. Maybe they figured their goose was already cooked and they should save money on lawyers.
This article was originally published by The Hamilton Spectator.
