When a single act of misconduct can be just cause for dismissal
The bar may be high for employers to prove just cause for dismissal, but sometimes even an instance of misconduct can be enough.
In the recent case of Steel v. Coast Capital Savings Credit Union, the Court of Appeal of British Columbia held that a single act of dishonesty justified the summary dismissal of an employee with 21 years of unblemished service. This case reinforces the notion that employees can be dismissed summarily – without notice or pay in lieu of notice – when acts of seemingly minor misconduct ultimately reveal an irreparable breakdown in an employment relationship.
Susan Steel was part of a helpdesk team that provided internal technical assistance to other employees of a credit union. Her work was generally unsupervised and she was one of few people within the organization who had unfettered access to all of the documents stored electronically on the credit union’s computer system, including personal folders assigned to employees for the storage of confidential documents. As a result, she was in a position that required the complete trust of the credit union. The credit union provided Steel and her colleagues with a detailed policy and protocol that they were to follow when accessing personal folders. Ultimately, Steel knew that she could only access documents in a personal folder after she received express permission to do so.
Without authorization and for her own purposes, Steel accessed the personal folder of a manager to find out where her name was on a parking priority list. She was caught when the manager was not able to access the document because it was open on Steel’s computer. Notwithstanding her clean disciplinary history, Steel was swiftly dismissed for cause. She sued and a trial judge found against her. Steel then appealed to the B.C. Court of Appeal.
The appeal court upheld the trial judge’s decision and found that “(Steel’s) conduct… breached the faith inherent to the work relationship, the result of which was that the relationship had irrevocably broken down.” In arriving at this conclusion, the appeal court relied on the fact that Steel occupied a position of trust in a financial sector where trust was of paramount importance. The appeal court held that Steel intentionally broke that trust by accessing a confidential document for her own benefit and violating the company’s clear policies by not obtaining permission to do so.
Take-away for employers and employees
The appeal court’s decision confirmed that a single act of misconduct may justify a summary dismissal in certain circumstances. The existence of a clear policy governing Steel’s conduct was essential to that finding. Thus, if an employer has a particular interest in maintaining certain standards of conduct, such as the respect of confidential information, then the employer should ensure such standards are written in a policy that is widely circulated to employees and is consistently enforced. This is particularly important in workplace settings where employees enjoy a significant amount of autonomy in their roles and the employer must trust them to perform their duties honestly and in good faith.
Our courts will continue to apply a contextual approach in analyzing whether acts of misconduct amount to just cause, so not every breach of a policy will support the summary dismissal of an employee. Nevertheless, employees are best advised to adhere to policies made known to them. Although employers face a high burden in defending just cause dismissals, in the face of even a single policy breach, Steel v. Coast Capital Savings Credit Union makes clear that the courts will not always favour the employee.
For more information see:
• Steel v. Coast Capital Savings Credit Union, 2015 CarswellBC 710 (B.C. C.A.).
Rich Appiah is a partner practicing labour and employment law with Israel Foulon LLP in Toronto. He has appeared before the Ontario and Superior Courts of Justice, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and the Ontario Labour Relations Board. He has also represented clients in proceedings before boards of arbitration, the provincial and federal Human Rights Tribunals, the Ontario Ministry of Labour (Employment Standards Branch), and the Canadian Industrial Relations Board. He can be reached at (416) 640-1550 ext. 225 or [email protected].
