Plaintiff gets bonus for only part of notice period

In Wilste v Saestar Chemicals ( 2020 BCSC 658) Saunders J. determined that an employee fired without cause in July of 2018 was entitled to 16 months notice. About 1/3 of his total comp was pursuant to a bonus plan which had a clause which said that in order to be entitled to a bonus payment, the employee had to be employed as of March 31st, the end of the fiscal year.

The judge awarded him the bonus for the period ending March 31, 2019 as he would have been employed on that date had he been given 16 months of working notice. However in order to be entitled to receive a bonus for the next fiscal year end (March 31, 2020), he would have had to receive a notice period of 20 months. thus he did not receive any bonus payment for the period from March 31, 2019 to the end of his notice period, which was November 2019.

My comments:

This judge did exactly what we are supposed to do in these cases, which is put the employee in the same financial position as if he been given 16 months working notice, or to phrase it another way, as if the plaintiff quit his employment at the end of the notice period. No more and no less.

If you keep this simple concept in mind (which I learnt in first year contracts at OHLS way back in the 70’s) the issue of how to calculate damages in a wrongful dismissal action becomes quite straight forward.

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Barry B. Fisher LL.B.

Barry B. Fisher, LL.B., is a mediator and arbitrator of both employment and labour relations matters. He offers three forms of ADR based on clients’ needs: Mediation, Arbitration and Med/Arb. Barry is from the evaluative school of mediation and brings his over 30 years' experience as an employment lawyer and legal author to the dispute. In addition to his knowledge of the legal issues involved in these disputes, he also has a deep understanding of the psychological factors that motivate both employees and employers. By combining these two skills, Barry is able to achieve a settlement rate of over 80% of the disputes that he mediates.

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