{"id":133590,"date":"2025-05-26T15:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T15:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133590\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T15:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T15:40:08","slug":"ontario-court-of-appeal-upholds-termination-clause-as-clear-unambiguous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133590\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario Court of Appeal upholds termination clause as clear, unambiguous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p paraeid=\"{07d31c19-dcfd-4b4d-bd4b-d110be57d238}{93}\" paraid=\"1146321230\">Additionally, the employment agreement included a clause stipulating that if any entitlements were less than ESA minimums, the worker would receive the statutory minimums instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p paraeid=\"{07d31c19-dcfd-4b4d-bd4b-d110be57d238}{117}\" paraid=\"1921315195\">Datastealth terminated the worker\u2019s employment after he had been with the company for eight-and-a-half months, providing him with four weeks\u2019 pay in lieu of notice. The statutory minimum under the ESA for the worker\u2019s service time was three weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wrongful dismissal action\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p paraeid=\"{07d31c19-dcfd-4b4d-bd4b-d110be57d238}{135}\" paraid=\"708512467\">The worker sued for wrongful dismissal, claiming that the termination clause was unenforceable and he was entitled to 12 months\u2019 common law notice. He argued that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrreporter.com\/focus-areas\/employment-law\/ambiguous-language-additional-handbook-make-termination-clause-unenforceable-ontario-court\/392516\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">clause was ambiguous<\/a> and could allow Datastealth to terminate his employment for cause that fell short of \u201cwillful misconduct, disobedience or willful neglect of duty\u201d without any notice or termination pay. Under the ESA regulation, the \u201cwillful misconduct\u201d standard is the only circumstance when notice or termination pay doesn\u2019t have to be provided by the employer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p paraeid=\"{07d31c19-dcfd-4b4d-bd4b-d110be57d238}{172}\" paraid=\"319496787\">Datastealth filed a motion seeking an interpretation of the termination clause and a dismissal of the worker\u2019s action on the grounds that it disclosed no tenable cause.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p paraeid=\"{07d31c19-dcfd-4b4d-bd4b-d110be57d238}{186}\" paraid=\"645101762\">The motion judge sided with Datastealth, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrreporter.com\/focus-areas\/employment-law\/do-termination-clauses-still-make-sense\/389317\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">finding that the termination clause was enforceable<\/a> and not in violation of the ESA. There was \u201cno reasonable interpretation\u201d of the clause that excluded the ESA\u2019s minimum requirements, the motion judge said. In addition, the \u201cfailsafe\u201d clause that expressly provided for minimum ESA entitlements in the event the termination clause fell short than the statutory minimums wasn\u2019t necessary because the termination clause was clear and unambiguous, said the motion judge in dismissing the worker\u2019s wrongful dismissal action.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Additionally, the employment agreement included a clause stipulating that if any entitlements were less than ESA minimums, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,22033,897,58774,16,15,48107],"class_list":{"0":"post-133590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-employment-standards","10":"tag-jobs","11":"tag-termination-clause","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-wrongful-dismissal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114574892997069262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}