Employment Law Review

In a recent decision out of the Alberta Court of King’s Bench, the Court reviewed the law on wrongful termination. The Plaintiff in this particular case was a long term employee of over 20 years before he was terminated for cause. The company cited that the employee converted a company cheque into his own name and put the money in his own bank account. However the Court found that while the employee did deposit funds into his own account, there was no evidence of doing so in bad faith to steal from the company. In fact, when the error pointed out to the employee, he promptly returned the funds.

Simply claiming suspicion that an employee attempted to steal from the company does not relinquish the companies evidentiary burden to show the Court that the action was objectionable. Based on this, the Court found that the employer was not justified in terminating their employee with cause. As such, the Plaintiff was awarded substantial damages in respect of what reasonable notice should have been. The full written decision can be found at the following link.