Court Says New Zealand Lamb Company’s Termination Clause Just Plain Baaa-d

Given all the other noise about what it takes to make a contractual termination clause legally binding, one can be forgiven for overlooking the most basic rule: The language used must be clear.

The contractual termination clause considered in the case of McMichael v The New Zealand & Australian Lamb Company, 2018 ONSC 5422 (CanLII), about which I recently blogged for other reasons in my post, Choice of Law Provisions: Application of the Ontario Employment Standards Act to International Employees, clearly demonstrates this most basic of rules.

Choice of Law Provisions: Application of the Ontario Employment Standards Act to International Employees

Can an employer and employee agree by contract that the laws of Ontario, Canada will apply to terms of their employment relationship, even if: (a) the employee works and is physically situated in in Los Angeles, California; and (b) the company is a New Jersey company with its head office in the State of Connecticut?

If the answer to that question is “yes”, do / can the employment standards set out in the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000 apply to such an employee?

Those were some of the questions put to the Honourable Justice James F. Diamond of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in the case of McMichael v The New Zealand & Australian Lamb Company, 2018 ONSC 5422 (CanLII).

Employee on Disability Leave Deemed to Have Abandoned Employment After Failing to Respond to Employer

Image: istock/Imilian

“You have the right to remain silent.” Those seven words are a fundamental principle of the Canadian criminal justice system. But what about the intersection of disability leave and employment law? Does an employee have the right to remain silent when his or her employer asks for an update on his or her health or an estimate of when the employee may be able to return to work?

While a lot of workers may believe that the answer to those questions is “yes”, in the case of Betts v IBM Canada Ltd., 2015 ONSC 5298 (CanLII) the Ontario Superior Court of Justice held otherwise.

Writing on behalf of the court, the Honourable Justice Diamond held as follows, “Even an employee suffering from medical issues is not immune from being found to have abandoned his/her employment.”