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Showing posts from February, 2023

Humphrey v. Mene at the Court of Appeal

 A few months ago, the Ontario Court of Appeal decided the appeal in Humphrey v. Mene  - I commented about the ONSC decision back in 2021 . The appeal succeeded, partially, on one point: The Court of Appeal found that declining a position with equivalent compensation several months into the notice period, she acted unreasonably and failed to mitigate. However, there's some good discussion of the other unsuccessful grounds of appeal relating to the length of the notice period, and aggravated and punitive damages. Reasonable Notice Period The Employer argued that, in light of her relatively modest salary, the Court shouldn't have viewed her as such a senior and high-responsibility employee. The Court of Appeal's commentary on this is pretty good: On the facts, the salary is more indicative of the means of the company than her own level of responsibility. While a twelve month notice period was at the high end, it wasn't outside the range of permissible outcomes. Bad Faith

Twitter Accounts of Public Officials

There's a bit of a perennial conflict on whether and when elected leaders should be able to block people on Twitter. The most high-profile such issue was when courts ruled that Donald Trump's Twitter account was being operated as a part of the government and therefore that blocking people infringed their First Amendment rights. (This didn't make it to SCOTUS until after the end of DJT's term, at which point it was moot, so the order was vacated...and so it's still not a settled question.) Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson was sued on a similar basis, and the litigation was resolved on the basis that he acknowledged that it was a public account and he couldn't block people arbitrarily . I debated the subject on Twitter some time ago  with Neuman Thomson's Dwayne Chomyn , among others, after Dr. Jared Wesley criticized Doug Schweitzer for blocking two academics who criticized a published statement of his. Now, Ezra Levant is making a constitutional challenge, alleging