Question

A. Issues [1] In addition to damages for one year's notice period, can a trial judge award significant damages for the mere fact of an employee's dismissal, or for the stigma that that dismissal brings? Or for the employer thereafter competing with the ex-employee for the clients, before the ex-employee has got a new job? B. Basic Facts [2] This is an appeal from 2009 ABQB 591 (CanLII), 473 A.R. 254. [3] Usually a judgment recites facts before law. But some of the facts here have no visible significance until one knows what law and issues were argued in this case. So I will give only general facts at the beginning, and defer detail about loss of customers to Part G.2 when discussing that topic. [4] The respondent was a very high-performing investment adviser employed by the appellant, a national brokerage and investment firm. After not quite three years' employment, he was dismissed without notice. (He had more seniority than that because of a merger of employers.) The appellant employer believed that it had about half a dozen grounds (cause) to dismiss. The trial Reasons later found that most of them existed, but that they were not bad enough to justify dismissal. [5] It took the respondent about three weeks to find a new job, and that was with a lesser employer. Many of his former very desirable retinue of clients did not follow him. In this results-based industry, his income dropped drastically. [6] The trial Reasons awarded a year's pay in lieu of notice, $600,000. No one appeals that. Instead, the employer's appeal centres on a second award of an extra $1.6 million in damages, being the amount which the Reasons gave the respondent. The Reasons said that was for what they called damage to his reputation and book of business or goodwill, which would not be compensated for by an award of damages in lieu of notice. c. Employers' Right to Dismiss Like the factums, I will start with first principles. The contract of employment here was the most common kind: a hiring for an indefinite period. [9] Under such contracts, the common terminology is sloppy, even misleading. We speak of "wrongful dismissal", or damages for that. But there is no such thing there as wrongful dismissal (apart from federal legislation). Under such a contract, either side may validly end the contract at any time. The employee neither has tenure, nor is indentured. The employee and the employer both have the right to end the contract, and ending it is not a breach of contract, nor a tort: Wallace v. Utd. Grain Growers 1997 CanLII 332 (SCC), [1997] 3 S.C.R. 701, 735, 219 N.R. 161, 152 D.L.R. (4th) 1, 27-28 (paras. 75-76); Desforge v. E-D Roofing (#1) (2008) 2008 CanLII 48130 (ON SC), 69 C.C.E.L. (3d) 115 (Ont.) (para. 80); Marchen v. Dams Ford Lincoln Sales, 2010 BCCA 29 (CanLII), 282 B.C.A.C. 120, 315 D.L.R. (4th) 728 (para. 38). There is no right to be allowed to resign instead of being dismissed. [10] And we speak of "reasonable notice". But all that need be reasonable is the length of the notice. The dismissal (or resignation) need not be reasonable; it may be whimsical, or inexplicable: Wallace v. U.G.G., supra. Backt [11] No cause whatever is needed for the employee to resign or for the employer to dismiss, and such resignation or dismissal cannot be legally upset (unless a collective agreement or certain federal legislation applies).

Answer 1

Which one is the false statement

Option B is false statement so B is correct option