Nancy Shapiro’s Awards

In a recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, the court considered a case of pandemic layoff and whether 9 months after the layoff occurred, the employee could be said to have condoned the layoff. The Court of Appeal relied upon one of its earlier decisions in...

The Ontario Court of Appeal has now issued a decision confirming the law with respect to workplace harassment investigation reports, wherein the investigator /author of the report, will not be liable for defamation for the findings in the report. In the case at bar,...

In a decision of the Honourable Mr. Justice Cavanagh released January 2, 2024, Boyer v. Callidus Capital Corp., [2024] O.J. No. 41, 2024 ONSC 20, the Court held that an employer had not clearly communicated the restrictive terms of its policies with respect to...

The issue of what a court will do when faced with a claim for variable compensation in the form of a Carried Interest Plan, much like a profit sharing plan, in which profit was recognized some 3-7 years following the initial investment, came before the Honourable Mr....

I was invited recently to speak at the HRPA Conference on the issue of bad faith damages.  I was focusing on the history of these awards and quantum. Then on May 2, 2024, the Ontario Court of Appeal released a decision in Krmpotic v. Thunder Bay Electronics...

We know that non-competition agreements are generally not enforceable in the employment context in Ontario if they were entered into after October 25, 2021, except in a handful of situations.  However, that still leaves: the rest of Canada; agreements prior to...

We assist clients manage all kinds of risks associated with employment. Legislative compliance is one such risk. Let’s address frequently neglected obligations of an employer that we are rarely asked about.  It is fall, almost Halloween, and we are not here to...

As we start off the new year it is a good time to review your practices and think of adopting some new ones.  What are the ways to do what you do better?  Here are a few thoughts on what we see businesses missing or getting wrong with great frequency. Not...

While the 2021 ESA amendments relating to non-competition agreements are likely to limit the circumstances in which such agreements can or will be used in the future, non-competition agreements that were in place prior to the ESA amendments remain unaffected. The...

The Ontario Court of Appeal in the 2019 decision of Dawe v. the Equitable Life Insurance Company of Canada held that only exceptional circumstances would support the award of a notice period in excess of 24 months in relation to the termination of someone’s...

It is not a criminal act to record conversations where you have the consent of one of the parties, typically by the one who is doing the recording.  However, we now have a case out of British Columbia finding, criminal or not, it was an invasion of privacy and...

In a recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the principles in the now infamous Waksdale v. Swegon North America Inc., 2020 ONCA 391 decision were applied to a fixed term contract, striking out a termination clause where the ‘for cause’...

In a seminal decision released on March 18, 2021, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has issued a finding supporting a claim of gender-based discrimination in relation to the unconscientious perception of the applicant as a woman and the gender bias which was...

While cases before the courts will wind their way through slowly, labour arbitration hearings can move at a quicker pace. Some COVID issues have already been decided in the collective bargaining context. Of note is a recent arbitration decision in the federal context...