Court Confirms Advanced Age And Short Service Does Not Automatically Equate To Lengthy Notice Period

I share legal cases that I think may apply to our clients (small and mid-sized firms), or areas they should be aware of.  Many of these are the extremes (rather than norms) of what happens when termination go wrong, for example, and illustrate the risks employers may face.  This article is more employer friendly and I especially like the commentary  where they say… “These decisions represent a major win for employers in Ontario. There is a commonly held belief that terminating a short-service, advanced-aged employee without an enforceable termination clause is akin to setting oneself on fire, when taking into consideration the perceived risk associated with combination of these outlier factors.”


A recent pair of Ontario Superior Court decisions offered interesting insight on the determination of reasonable notice when faced with widely considered “outlier” factors. The two decisions,  Flack v. Whiteoak Ford Lincoln Sales Limited (“Flack”) and  Ewach v. Whiteoak Ford Lincoln Sales Limited (“Ewach”), were presented back-to-back to Justice S.F. Dunphy and involved the same employer and employees in similar circumstances.

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