Whistler Four Seasons’ case shows how progressive discipline and timing can make or break an employer's position
Employers often believe they have grounds to terminate an employee for just cause, only to discover in a tribunal hearing that their case falls short.
This point was illustrated perfectly in a recent B.C. Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) decision that saw a prominent Whistler hotel ordered to pay a former massage therapist $5,000 – the maximum award for a civil claims case – for failing to prove it had just cause to terminate him without notice.
David Brown, partner at Ascent Employment Law in Kelowna, explains the disconnect between employer confidence and legal reality, and how employers often fall short of the high bar for establishing just cause: “Just cause terminations are usually high conflict, and they come down to the facts.”
Written warnings for hotel worker
In the decision, Kiiveri v. Four Seasons Whistler Hotel Limited Partnership (2025 BCCRT 1613), the CRT examined whether Four Seasons had just cause to terminate the employee, employed since September 2022, without notice on March 19, 2024.
In 2022 the employee had been given written warnings for not following clock-in and -out procedure, and for eating in the cafeteria while off shift.
It also referred to an incident where the employee was at an off-site bar with co-workers, some of whom had complained about what they viewed as inappropriate behaviour while he was inebriated.
The tribunal also dismissed that argument – as Brown outlines: “People can be disciplined for off-duty conduct, but … what the employer is going to have to be able to show is that the off-duty conduct is adverse to their interests in some kind of way.”
Just cause and the employment relationship breakdown
In his decision, tribunal member Peter Mennie noted that the onus is on the employer to prove that an employee's misconduct amounted to “an irreparable breakdown in the employment relationship.” The employer bears the full burden of demonstrating this breakdown, not the employee proving they did nothing wrong.
This is not a low bar, Brown stresses.
"The problem with cause is that it's always fact-dependent. It's often a high burden to meet,” he says, explaining that without clear evidence of how specific conduct severed the relationship, even multiple incidents may not constitute just cause.
The tribunal found that while Four Seasons documented policy violations in 2022 and an unprofessional phone call in 2023, it failed to establish just cause because the employee’s behaviour improved after the warnings and no misconduct occurred closer to his termination in March 2024.
The tribunal applied the test established in McKinley v. BC Tel, which requires assessing both the misconduct itself and whether the employment relationship could realistically continue; the tribunal concluded that “Four Seasons did not explain why the employment relationship could not continue in March 2024.”
Why old warnings undermine termination decisions
According to the Four Seasons decision, the employer's only documented discipline came from December 2022, roughly 15 months before termination.
There was a performance review from the same period that noted policy violations, but no further discipline appeared in the record until the termination decision in March 2024; a critical weakness, Brown explains.
“That timeline is not going to be helpful to the employer here. It may be well viewed as stale,” he says.
“It doesn't mean that you can't cite it or you can't reference it. But the effect of it is lessened over time, and eventually you could argue that it has no relevance at all anymore.”
Brown stresses that the passage of time between discipline and termination functions as a mitigating factor in tribunal analysis – without a visible progression of discipline, even documented misconduct may appear arbitrary or excessive from a tribunal's perspective.
Further, the employer must prove that not only were rules breached, but that the employee understood the consequences, including possible termination.
“If there's progressive discipline, and the person is made aware of the challenges and it's explained to them that they need to correct this and there's plenty of follow-up and there's coaching, at some point in time, even something as simple as being late or not following an internal procedure will amount to just cause,” Brown says.
