I cannot overstate the number of times employees have visited our office complaining that some Curly, Larry or Moe was offered far more severance than they were and, therefore, that they should be able to sue to recover those greater amounts.An even more common complaint is that their employer had historically offered lump-sum severance amounts but suddenly changed its approach to offering continuing severance lasting only until the employee in question found a new job.
Severance entitlement cannot be determined by a formula or a severance calculator. It is as much an art as a science, looking at what might be as many as 120 factors courts might review in determining, with the major ones being re-employability, age, length of service and the status of the employee’s position. What others in the same company receive is totally irrelevant to another employee’s legal entitlement.
But the Ontario court obliged this employee: “In light of the pleadings in this action, the disputed relevant. If the court finds that there was no just cause for the plaintiff’s dismissal, the termination packages provided to similarly situated employees and the defendant’s policy and/or practice determining termination packages will be relevant to the determination of the plaintiff’s damages,” the judge wrote.
The impact of this ruling, of course, is to motivate any employee who learns that other employees at their company were offered more than they, to issue a Statement of Claim arguing that the practice and policies of their company required it to offer them the same, resulting in the company then having to produce what would normally be confidential severance packages of numerous other employees. The truth is that few employers pay employees as much as their cases are worth in court.