IGNACE — The Township of Ignace wants to take its appeal of a wrongful dismissal case to the highest court in the land.
Ignace lost its first appeal of the $157,000-plus judgment against in the township in a provincial court. It has now applied for leave to further appeal at the Supreme Court level, the township’s outreach lead confirmed this week.
“Council disagrees with the outcome of the most recent appeal and is exercising its right to apply for leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court,” Jake Pastore said in an email to Newswatch.
“We cannot comment on any other aspect of this case, details or circumstances around it while it continues to be dealt with in the courts.”
Superior Court Justice Helen Pierce awarded former township employee Karen Dufault $157,000 in damages last February.
The amount represents the 101 weeks’ worth of pay and benefits Dufault would have received if her contract as the township’s youth engagement coordinator had run its course instead of being terminated on Jan. 26, 2023.
The municipality gave Dufault two weeks’ salary as severance pay when it fired her, but her lawyer argued in court that the termination clause in her contract was illegal and unenforceable.
The judge agreed, and last month a three-judge panel in the Court of Appeal for Ontario upheld Pierce’s decision.
The appellate judges ruled that the termination clause in Dufault’s contract with the township did not meet the minimum standards set out in the provincial Employment Standards Act (ESA) and the act’s regulations.
The judges said in their ruling that they were following the established principle that “termination clauses should be interpreted in a way that encourages employers to draft agreements that comply with the ESA.
“If the only consequence for an employer of drafting a termination clause that does not comply with ESA minimum standards is an order that they comply,” the judges wrote, “employers will have little incentive to draft a lawful termination clause at the start of the employment relationship.”
Complying with the law when dismissing an employee does not make an ESA violation in the employment contract excusable, they added.
In addition to upholding Pierce’s $157,000 award to Dufault, the appellate court ordered Ignace to reimburse her for up to $15,000 in costs arising from the township’s appeal.
The appeal court’s ruling was unsurprising, Dufault’s lawyer, Jon Pinkus, said in an interview from Toronto this week.
Upholding Pierce’s decision made sense “in light of the fact that the termination clause in this case was so clearly illegal based on such longstanding, such well settled principles that have been enunciated so many times by not only lower courts but appellate courts,” he said.
For the township, he said, a Supreme Court of Canada appeal is “the only place they have left to go.”
Only a small percentage of applications for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court are granted, Pinkus noted, and he doubts that this one will meet with success.
The high court denied leave to appeal “on the exact same issue” in another case a few years ago, he said.
