$2.6 million in damages: RBC 'went nuclear' against financial planner, says court

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ruled that the Royal Bank of Canada wrongfully dismissed one of its highest-performing financial planners for cause, and has ordered the bank and its mutual fund subsidiary to pay more than $2.6 million in damages — including $250,000 in punitive damages — for conduct the court described as harsh, reprehensible, and a marked departure from ordinary standards of decent behaviour.

The decision, Silva v. Royal Bank of Canada, was recently released by Justice Casullo of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice following a trial that ran across 25 hearing days between January and October 2025.

The case involved Ravini Silva, a financial planner who had worked at RBC since 2006 and was dismissed for cause in 2018 on allegations that she forwarded confidential client information to her personal email, processed trades without proper client authorization, and instructed clients to backdate documents.

Justice Casullo found that none of the three allegations amounted to just cause for dismissal — and that the internal investigation used to build the case against Silva was not genuine fact-finding, but "more a form of ammunition gathering."

Decorated career derailed by conflict

According to the court's reasons, Silva immigrated to Canada from Sri Lanka in 2004 and quickly rebuilt a banking career, first at TD Bank and then at RBC, where she was hired in 2006 and eventually promoted to financial planner. By 2015 and 2016, the court found, she had ranked first among financial planners in the Greater Toronto Area and third in Canada, earning an all-expenses-paid convention cruise for exceptional sales results.

The court found that the trouble began after Silva transferred from RBC's Ajax branch to its Richmond Hill branch in mid-2016. A plan to gradually transition her Ajax clients to Richmond Hill-based clients broke down, the court found, as management concluded Silva was being defiant and insubordinate, and Silva concluded she was receiving mixed signals and was being unfairly targeted.

What followed, Justice Casullo found, was a "progressive breakdown in relations" between Silva and a series of managers — her direct supervisor, a regional vice-president, and two subsequent managers. Silva received four consecutive "Does Not Meet" quarterly performance ratings between late 2016 and 2017 — her first ever in 10 years at the bank — after years of positive reviews. Each rating reduced her variable compensation by ten per cent.

Employee relations advisor works both sides

The court found that Doug Berry, an RBC employee relations advisor, played an unusually central role in events — simultaneously advising management on how to handle Silva while also being assigned to receive and investigate her complaint that the ratings were retaliation for her compensation escalations.

Justice Casullo found that Silva was unaware Berry had been advising her managers throughout the period he was ostensibly investigating her complaint on her behalf.

The court wrote that Berry was "steering both sides of the conflict forward," tasked with "receiving, managing, collecting information, and crafting RBC's response" to Silva's formal complaint, while at the same time tasked with investigating that same complaint on Silva's behalf.

The court found there was "zero evidence" that Berry took any meaningful steps to assess Silva's retaliation concerns, and that RBC provided no evidence of any detailed response to the specific allegations she raised.

Silva ultimately retained an employment lawyer to advance her complaint. On Feb. 8, 2018 — less than three months before she was fired — RBC declared the matter closed without explanation.

‘Woefully short’ investigation at RBC

The dismissal followed an internal investigation conducted by RBC's Corporate Investigation Services unit and a parallel review by compliance staff at RBC's mutual fund subsidiary, Royal Mutual Funds Inc.

The court found that the investigation was triggered in early December 2017 when a branch manager noticed a colleague was processing trades for Silva's clients — conduct that eventually resulted in that colleague, not Silva, receiving a formal written warning. Silva's own managers requested an urgent investigation of Silva the same afternoon.

According to the court, the RMFI compliance investigator had been on the job for only four days when she was assigned Silva's file, had not yet completed mandatory training, and was not fully familiar with RBC's policies and procedures. Despite this, the court found, she filed a regulatory report with the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada categorizing Silva's alleged conduct under "Other Theft, Fraud and Serious Misconduct" — without first interviewing Silva, contacting any of the affected clients, reviewing relevant branch paperwork, or consulting the compliance officer who had conducted the initial trade review.

The court found the CIS investigator was not familiar with the relevant compliance policies, had no compliance credentials, and had searched Silva's work emails looking for "incriminating" information at management's direction — a task the investigator herself agreed was not within her mandate.

The court found that no one involved in the investigation — not CIS, not RMFI's compliance team, and not Silva's managers — contacted the clients whose trades were at issue until more than seven years later, in the months before trial.

"I find CIS's investigation fell woefully short of being thorough, fair, and contextual," Justice Casullo wrote. "Instead, it lacked impartiality and was deeply flawed."

Allegations against employee

Forwarding emails to a personal account: The court found Silva did breach RBC policy on two occasions by forwarding emails containing client information to her personal account, and that she conceded as much. However, Justice Casullo found the level of egregiousness was "extremely low" — the emails were sent for work-related purposes, were deleted after she extracted what she needed, and were not shared with anyone. RBC did not report the breaches to the Privacy Commissioner, as required by federal law when a breach poses a "real risk of significant harm."

Processing trades without client authorization: The court found a "dearth of hard evidence" on this allegation, but placed that squarely at RBC's feet. RBC had failed to interview clients, search for non-standard forms that may have been in branch files, or preserve Silva's calendar and diary notes.

The clients themselves — who testified at trial — confirmed the trades had been authorized, though they could not speak to the mechanics of how they were processed. The court found on a balance of probabilities that Silva had followed RBC's phone/fax/email exception policy.

The court also noted that a colleague had breached that same policy 11 times and received only a written warning.

Backdating documents: The court found this allegation failed entirely. Silva testified that asking clients to re-sign missing documents using the original signature date was a practice she had been taught at RBC as far back as 2007. A branch manager confirmed that this was indeed RBC's standard practice when documents went missing. Three separate instances were documented in the court record where Silva had engaged in this practice with her direct manager copied on the email, and no correction was ever issued.

Despite producing an undertaking at trial to provide any document outlining the correct procedure for re-signing missing documents, the court found, RBC could not point to a single policy, regulation, or authority that set out a different practice. "If backdating was seen to be a form of document falsification, I trust RBC would have produced a policy prohibiting employees from doing so," Justice Casullo wrote.

Evidence of targeting for dismissal

The court made pointed findings about the intent behind management's actions toward Silva in the months before her dismissal.

Justice Casullo found that as early as November 2017, the regional vice-president was emailing Berry about potential termination, with messages that included references to "looking at other opportunities or even exit" and "contemplating of parting ways."

Silva's direct manager's handwritten notes, the court found, included references before the CIS interview to "we're done, w/out cause and dismiss" and "gut will be dismissal."

The court also found that the night before a quarterly review meeting at which Silva expressed suicidal thoughts about the pressure she was under, her direct manager had emailed a colleague — at the regional vice-president's request — asking whether Silva had made unauthorized transfers. No unauthorized transfers were found.

"RBC did not choose any of these well-established routes," Justice Casullo concluded, referring to the options of managing a difficult employee through coaching, documentation, or without-cause dismissal.

"Instead, RBC went nuclear, looking for infractions and manufacturing violations where none existed, ultimately dismissing Silva for cause."

'For cause' and regulatory filings

The court found that the consequences of the "for cause" finding in the regulatory filings were severe and lasting. RBC's Notice of Termination filing with the Ontario Securities Commission indicated Silva had been investigated for possible material violations of fiduciary duties and had repeatedly failed to follow compliance policies and procedures.

The court found that after receiving the notice, two prospective employers — TD Bank, which had initially hired Silva, and IG Wealth Management — terminated or ended discussions with her solely because of the "for cause" designation. A third recruiter told the court that even if the notice were corrected, the passage of time had made Silva "much less marketable" given that her ability to bring a book of business had dissipated.

The MFDA ultimately reviewed the allegations and, in October 2018, found Silva in breach of certain rules — but characterized the breaches as "minor in nature" and took no disciplinary action beyond a cautionary letter.

"The misconduct that led RBC to terminate Silva was of such minor concern to the national regulator, overseer of all mutual fund firms and their representatives, that no sanction was deemed necessary," Justice Casullo wrote.

At the time of trial, more than eight years after her dismissal, Silva remained employed as a credit analyst at a third-party benefits administrator, earning about $69,000 per year — compared to average annual earnings of $235,000 during her final years at RBC.

Damages for RBC financial analyst

Justice Casullo awarded Silva damages under four heads:

Reasonable notice: $313,333, representing 16 months of notice based on Silva's age, 12-year tenure, and the specialized nature of her role as a licensed financial planner. The court adjusted downward from the 18 months Silva sought, finding she was not a long-term senior employee disadvantaged in the job market by age alone — though it noted the regulatory filing created its own distinct barrier to re-employment.

Loss of earning capacity: $1,919,272, the court found, to compensate Silva for the income she will lose until age 60 as a result of being unable to return to the financial planning industry. The court preferred the methodology of Silva's expert, who calculated the loss based on her actual post-termination earnings rather than assumed future income from an MBA she completed after being dismissed. The court found it would take Silva roughly five years after correcting the regulatory filing to rebuild a client base, noting it had taken her eight years to build her original book of business at RBC.

Aggravated damages: $150,000, reflecting the medical evidence before the court — including testimony from Silva's family physician — of distress, depression, and anxiety caused by the manner of dismissal and its aftermath. The court found this was not "normal distress and hurt feelings" but a documented and worsening condition.

Punitive damages: $250,000. Justice Casullo found this was one of the exceptional cases warranting such an award, citing the regional vice-president's conduct after learning of the retaliation complaint, Berry's simultaneous role on both sides of the conflict, and the filing of regulatory reports RBC knew would cause "permanent damage" to Silva. "RBC is one of Canada's most revered institutions," the court wrote. "It expects high standards from its employees. It should be held to those same standards."

The court also ordered RMFI to file a notice of correction of the regulatory filing with the national regulator (now CIRO, following the amalgamation of the MFDA and IIROC in 2023), and stated it will remain seized of the matter if the parties cannot agree on the form of correction.