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11/04/2006 - Privacy Issues in the Workplace: Presentations by Tim Lawson and Rhonda Shirreff
Lancaster House's Workplace Privacy 2006 Conference, which takes place in Toronto on April 11, features two of our lawyers as panellists. Tim Lawson will be discussing on “Union/Employer issues: a major caselaw update — Resolving conflicts between privacy rights and the need to know”, while Rhonda R. Shirreff will explore “Drug and alcohol testing: changing rules, changing attitudes”.
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01/11/2005 - The Third Annual UWO/Heenan Blaikie Labour Law Conference: Yet Another Success
The Third Annual University of Western Ontario Heenan Blaikie LLP Labour Law Conference was held on October 14 and 15, 2005 in London, Ontario. The event was very well-attended, with close to 150 of the top labour law thinkers, practitioners, academics, and neutrals in attendance. The subject of the conference was Labour Law Administration and Reform. Speakers included Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Stephen Goudge, and Professors David Mullan, Morley Gunderson, Sara Slinn and Judy Fudge. Canada Industrial Relations Board Chair Warren Edmondson and Ontario Labour Relations Board Chair Kevin Whitaker also participated as panel chairs. Heenan Blaikie's own Brian Burkett and Peter Gall presented papers. The Conference organizing committee included Brian Burkett and John Craig of the Toronto labour department, and Samera Marei from Marketing and Communications.
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01/11/2005 - Two More Papers By Jonathan Dye Get Published
Jonathan Dye has had two more of his articles published recently. The first, “Employee Issues when Buying a Business in Canada”, was featured in the Fall 2005 issue of The Job Description, published in the United States. The second, a case commentary and critique entitled, “Why parts of this Honda just won't run”, has been published in the latest edition of The Advocates' Quarterly.
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25/10/2005 - Jonathan Dye Chair of Lorman's Employment and Labour Law Conference
Jonathan Dye chaired the Lorman Education Services' Employment and Labour Law conference in London, Ontario on October 25, 2005. The seminar's faculty is made up of lawyers from our Labour and Employment Group in Toronto:
Megan Telford - spoke about the Ontario Employment Standards Act;
Rhonda Shirreff - spoke about privacy laws and their application to the Ontario workplace;
Lia Chiarotto - provided an overview of key workers' compensation issues;
John Craig - spoke about the application of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in recent and pending labour law cases;
Matt Link - spoke about the doctrine of constructive dismissal and how employers can avoid such claims;
Jonathan Dye - addressed the effective litigation of wrongful dismissal actions.
Consult the conference brochure for more information.
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15/10/2005 - Heenan Blaikie Co-Hosted 3rd Annual Labour Law Conference
Heenan Blaikie and the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law co-hosted the 3rd annual labour law conference entitled "Labour Law Reform - Administering Labour Law" in London, Ontario. For more information on panelists, speakers and topics or to register for the conference, contact John Craig at 416 360.3527 (jcraig@heenan.ca).
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01/08/2005 - Heenan Blaikie Releases a New Handbook on Labour Law in Québec
More Questions Frequently Asked in Québec Labour & Employment Law, jointly published by the firm and by Carswell, follows a similar handbook published in 2002 under the title 14 Questions Frequently Asked in Québec Labour & Employment Law. The book is the result of the collaborative work of a number of lawyers from the firm, under the leadership of Robert Bonhomme, Danny J. Kaufer et Gary S. Rosen:
Ralph D. Farley — The Protection of Employees from Psychological Harassment
Danny J. Kaufer — The Certification Process in Québec
Robert Bonhomme — The Closure or Partial Reduction of the Operations of a Business: What to Know
Magali Cournoyer-Proulx, Robert Bonhomme — The Termination of the Employment of Non-unionized Employees
Geneviève Beaudin, Jacques A. Nadeau — Controlling the Use of E-Mail and the Internet in the Workplace
Corrado De Stefano — Drug and Alcohol Testing
Norman A. Dionne — What Employers Should Know About Video Surveillance
Simon-Pierre Paquette — Employee Holidays, Leaves and Absences Under Québec Labour and Employment Legislation
Laurent Lesage — The Implications of the Sale of a Business or Subcontracting
Claude Martin — The Cost and Funding of the Québec Workers’ Compensation Regime
Magali Cournoyer-Proulx — Release and Discharge: What an Employer Should Know
Pascal Rochefort, Gary S. Rosen — Protection Against Discrimination Based on Mental Illness in the Workplace
Gary S. Rosen, Sébastien Lorquet — The Personal Liability of Managers, Officers and Directors for Employment-Related Claims
This clear and practical handbook will be a most useful tool for Quebec lawyers and human resources professionals.
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08/04/05 - Victory in the Court of Appeal and a Mention in The Lawyers Weekly for Jeffrey Goodman
The decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Stoody v. Kennedy, 2005 CanLII 7647 (Court’s Website: HTML; PDF) was especially sweet to Jeffrey Goodman. Not only did he obtain judgment in favour of his client: he was also quoted in the write-up found in the April 8 edition of The Lawyers Weekly. The case involved a claim made by an ex-employee who had won judgment against his corporate employer for unpaid commissions. Rather than realise on the judgment, he brought a second action against, inter alia, the directors of the company’s parent, one of which was Jeffrey’s client. The Court refused to follow the convoluted reasoning of the trial judge, and held that the statutory conditions for a directors’ liability claim had to be strictly followed.
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08/02/2005 - John Craig's Comments on the Nortel Bonus Case in the New York Times and the Ottawa Citizen
Nortel is suing three of its former officers. The company is claiming bonuses that they had been paid on the basis of a profit which, as Nortel discovered later, was due to their allegedly having tampered with the accounting to hide a loss. “Nortel Sues 3 Ex-Officers Over Big Bonuses”, published in the February 4 edition of the New York Times, and “Frank Dunn’s defence options can be fraught with peril”, which appeared on February 8 in the Ottawa Citizen, are highlighted with comments from John Craig on the legal and strategic issues of the case.
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04/02/2005 - Toronto - Jonathan Dye Speaking on Disability Cases
In 1997, to establish some consistency across the country, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that dismissed employees could not collect both disability benefits and severance payments during the reasonable notice period. Four years later, the Ontario Court of Appeal introduced exceptions to that simple rule, and thereby threw the issue back into flux. What has happened since then? What does it mean for employers? What does it mean for insurers?
Such are the questions that Jonathan L. Dye analyzed in “Offsetting Disability Benefits and Severance Payments” as part of the Canadian Defence Lawyers seminar, A Primer for Litigating Disability Cases. Mr. Dye will review the most recent caselaw that determines when an employee can, and cannot, collect disability benefits and severance payments at the same time.
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17/09/2004 - Arbitration Act and Labour Relations: Jeffrey Goodman Quoted in the Toronto Star
Jeffrey Goodman's conclusions on the impact of the Ontario Arbitration Act on labour relations were part of "Ontario residents denied justice”, an opinion appearing on page A17 of the September 13, 2004 edition of the Toronto Star. The article discussed cases where the Act may preclude, for practical reasons, recourses such as class actions and claims for wrongful dismissals.
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20/05/2004 - Tim Lawson at a Privacy Conference
Tim Lawson spoke at a two-day conference on privacy issues organized by NYMITY, a privacy consulting firm. His presentation was entitled “The Impact of Privacy Legislation on the Unionized Workplace”. The Privacy Commissions from Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta and the Federal government were all present.
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10/03/2004 - Mark Power Co-author of Language Rights in Canada
Mark Power is one of the collaborators of Language Rights in Canada, 2nd ed., a major book written under the direction of Mr. Justice Michel Bastarache, of the Supreme Court of Canada, with a preface by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary General of the United Nations. Mark co-authored two chapters: “Language Rights and Education”, and “The Enforcement of Language Rights”.
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29/01/2004 - Important Victory for Employers in the Supreme Court
An important case on employers' rights has been won by our firm. In I.A.T.S.E., Stage Local 56 v. Société de la Place des Arts de Montréal, released on January 29, 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada relaxed significantly the strike-breaker rules in Quebec's Labour Code. The Place des Arts, an important arts centre in Montréal, had decided to cease offering to its tenants (the Montreal Symphony, the Jazz Festival, etc.) certain services which were performed by union stage technicians. The leases were amended accordingly, and it was then up to each tenant to hire its own stage technicians, or contract out those services.
The union brought proceedings against the employer, under rules that preclude "utilizing, in the establishment where [a] strike or lock-out has been declared, the services of a person employed by another employer or the services of another contractor to discharge the duties of an employee who is a member of the bargaining unit on strike or locked out". In a unanimous decision, the Court declared that the strike-breaker rules did not apply in this case: the Place des Arts "has the right under Quebec law to go partially or completely out of business".
The Place des Arts was represented by Robert Bonhomme, Louis Leclerc and Richard Gaudreault.
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