Gordon Capern

Following a trial judgment awarding the plaintiff $2.54 million in damages for wrongful dismissal, the court determined costs and pre-judgment interest.

The plaintiff sought substantial indemnity costs based on pre-trial offers to settle and an elevated pre-judgment interest rate.

The court found the plaintiff did not beat his initial offer due to a pre-trial payment by the defendant, and his amended offer was made too late to trigger Rule 49.10.

The court declined to exercise its discretion to award elevated costs, finding no reprehensible conduct by the defendant.

The court also declined to depart from the prescribed pre-judgment interest rate of 2.0%, finding no unusual circumstances to justify a higher rate.

Costs were awarded on a partial indemnity scale in the amount of $798,453.91.

The plaintiff, a 52-year-old Managing Director in investment banking with 18 years of service, was terminated without cause.

The court determined the reasonable notice period to be 21 months, considering his age, length of service, and specialized role.

The court used a comparator approach to calculate the plaintiff's lost bonuses during the notice period, rejecting the employer's averaging approach due to the highly cyclical nature of the mining market and the employer's record profits during the notice period.

After deducting mitigation earnings and severance already paid, the court awarded the plaintiff $2,540,073.95 in damages.

The appellant sought to enforce a Chilean arbitral award in Ontario against the respondent, a non-party to the arbitration, arguing the respondent assumed the judgment debtor's liabilities through an Italian spin-off agreement.

The motion judge stayed the enforcement application on the basis of forum non conveniens, finding that the threshold issue of liability must be determined first and that Italy was the clearly more appropriate forum.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that the motion judge did not err in severing liability from enforcement, applying the forum non conveniens doctrine, or granting a temporary stay pending the resolution of Italian proceedings.