$300-million claim against Workday thrown out over note on 'aggressive behaviour'

“This is a good cautionary tale,” says Richard Johnson, co-founder and partner at Ascent Employment Law in Vancouver.

He’s speaking of a recent case in which an employee sued for defamation after a series of incidents regarding his performance, including notes about his “aggressive behaviour” and the presence of a security guard at the office.

The employee went on to sue for $300 million, but the Supreme Court of British Columbia has now dismissed the claim — subject to appeal — finding the note was protected by qualified privilege.

"The decision was a pretty resounding dismissal of what was a pretty frivolous complaint," says David Fanjoy, a partner in the employment and labour relations group at McMillan in Toronto.

“I think it gives some reassurance to employers and HR staff and managers who might receive these sort of defamation complaints that there is this very legitimate defense of qualified privilege that will defend against a defamation claim.”

A note in a shared agenda

The employee, identified only as C.O., joined Workday's Vancouver office as a quality assurance engineer in June 2023. His supervisor and her own supervisor kept a running agenda for their weekly meetings in a shared Google Docs file.

On March 25, 2025, ahead of an in-person performance meeting, his supervisor drafted a message in that agenda for approval. It read: "Due to past instances of aggressive behaviour by [C.O.] towards other team members and myself, and the unpredictability of his conduct, what contingencies can be in place to ensure our safety while we are in the office?"

The message was sent to an HR employee, and Workday hired a security guard for the April 2, 2025 meeting. C.O. said the guard threatened, detained and harassed him, and he sought $300 million for psychological injuries.

Workday asked the court to dismiss the claim by summary trial. At the hearing, it relied only on qualified privilege, so the court assumed, for the purposes of the hearing, that the elements of defamation “have been proven.”

Justice McQueen accepted affidavit evidence from two colleagues and both supervisors that C.O. responded poorly to feedback. She found that by March 2025, the first supervisor had a "reasonably founded, sincerely held feeling of fear" about how he would react to negative news, and she did not act out of malice.

Qualified privilege and job duties

The court found the note was a business communication between colleagues. The judge called the statement measured and restrained, and found its publication was limited to the people needed to approve and carry out a response.

Fanjoy says the case highlights the importance of contextual analysis with defamation.

"It's not like some of the other legal doctrines that are out there where the courts set out this really prescribed test."

The business setting also gives employers a strong starting point.

"In the business context, communications that are necessary between employees are almost always going to be protected by qualified privilege so long as it relates to their job duties,” he says.

In this case, the court found that the person sending the alleged defamatory statement had a reasonable reason to send the message, and the person receiving it had a reasonable reason to receive it, says Fanjoy. "If that had been a company-wide email, it would have probably been considered defamatory because the recipients would not have needed to receive it."

Johnson agrees the audience was decisive.

"It was clear that Workday had done what they needed to do to be successful in terms of communicating the business information," he says. "It was sent only to people with an actual reason to view it. So, a legitimate purpose in receiving the information. And I think that that saved the day.”

Need-to-know basis for communications

Fanjoy recommends starting small. "Limit who needs to know and then sort of work backwards in terms of, ‘OK, do I need to add this person or add this person?’" he says.

"Keeping people on a need-to-know basis is almost a universal best practice.”

HR should make sure that when they’re talking about performance or internal concerns about an employee, they only deliver it to those with a need to know, says Johnson, who suggests writing that into policy.

"It's really important to have as part of your policy who is disclosing what information to whom," he says. "It doesn't have to be by name. It can be by position title, but there should be some guidance about who discloses information from a personnel perspective to others and how that's conveyed to keep everybody on the right track."

‘The biggest pitfall’: group chats

Both lawyers say the shift to messaging platforms makes it easier to lose control of who sees what.

"I think that probably the biggest pitfall there is the big group chats on Slack and Teams," says Fanjoy.

A statement that could be defamatory may be fully defensible if it goes only to the management or HR group chat, he says. "Those people need to receive it."

"But if you've now included the four people who you're friends with in other departments or three people in another office who you like to chat with, those people don't need to know," he says. "And now you're outside of the qualified privilege defense because the recipients did not need that statement."

Johnson says informal relationships add another layer.

"It's very easy for the lines of communication to become blurred," he says. Managers may have brought team members with them from previous jobs or have friendships at work. "You might have a manager who's friends with a coworker and talking about things offline."

"Those can be problematic communications if they're talking about a fellow coworker and problems that are being dealt with formally inside the business," he says. "Be careful of who you're divulging things to, even informally in the workplace."

Negative feedback allowed

Critical language such as “not a team player” or “condescending” in a performance review isn't the risk on its own, says Fanjoy.

"It's not defamatory because there's a reasonable basis for making the statements right there, and you're not publishing those statements to the company as a whole," he says. "Companies and managers are not prohibited from making negative statements in a performance review. They're just prohibited from sharing those negative statements completely unnecessarily."

In Workday, the court reviewed the supervisor’s coaching emails and meeting script and found them professional, balanced and constructive. It also found the safety note was made out of a sincere concern rather than malice:

“Although technical in nature, assessed objectively, I find these emails provide professional, balanced and constructive feedback to C.O. respecting valid and substantive performance issues

“I have rejected C.O.’s allegation that [the supervisor] acted in actual or express malice, in pursuit of a conspiracy against C.O., or in any way improperly in publishing the alleged defamatory statement. I find that [she] did not make the alleged defamatory statement knowing it was not true, or that she was reckless of the truth.”

Johnson says that finding about the supervisor’s concern ran through the whole case. The note's reference to past aggressive behaviour "was found to have been a reasonably founded and sincerely held belief," he says. "And I think it painted a contextual picture of the type of concern that was going on in the workplace."

"Had that not been there, this might have been a different case, and it wouldn't have been $300 million, but it may have been very well a different case," he says.

Fanjoy points to the quality of the employer's evidence. "This is, I think, also a case where they won on strong witness evidence, which is easier to do when you have the facts on your side," he says.

'Aspirational': Do codes of conduct matter?

C.O. argued that if he had really been aggressive, Workday would have disciplined him under its zero-tolerance code of conduct. The court disagreed, finding the failure to invoke the code was not determinative.

“The Code of Conduct was a statement of best practices and an aspirational document inevitably subject to the realities of the competitive employment market, the costs associated with recruiting and retaining employees, operational business needs and the risks and burdens of employment law.”

Fanjoy says the employee was using the code to try to prove a negative: “He was trying to say, ‘Well, because the code of conduct was never invoked, therefore, I can't have been in violation.’"

And here, the court is taking the common sense view that not every infraction of a code of conduct is going to be handled precisely the way the code of conduct states, he says.

“There are realities to human and employee interactions where people are not going to run to the policy over every little thing," he says. "I think the court statement on this reflects what everybody thinks about codes of conduct."

Johnson notes that WorkSafeBC requires employers to have a respectful workplace policy addressing bullying and harassment, “but they’re an ideal process."

"Life is not so clean, and I don't think we hold employers to perfection. So, in that regard, I would agree that it's aspirational," he says.

But that’s not to say this kind of policy should be ignored.

"If you materially step outside of your own process and you buck that process or policy and you say, ‘We're going to ignore it and go in a different direction,’ that, I think employers do so to their detriment, and WorkSafe, for example, would take issue with it, and so would the courts."

"You're not held to perfection, but you  are held to generally follow the contours of your own code of conduct or your own policies."

Johnson also recommends policies broad enough to reach behaviour that falls short of legal definitions of bullying or harassment.

"I think it is really important to consider whether you want to actually have a policy that targets some of the more insidious behaviors that can undermine workplace culture, like eye-rolling, gossip, condescension, insubordination," he says.

“It allows the employer a bit more leeway to call employees out on behaviours that are unworkable… and then it’s [about] enforcing it.”

Counterclaims, costs and going public

When an employee makes an unfounded claim, Fanjoy says firing back is rarely the answer. "A counterclaim is usually not the most productive," he says, unless there is a specific issue such as property damage, theft, breach of confidential information, or other restrictive covenants.

Instead, he points to costs. The court awarded Workday its costs of the action. "That is in many ways the punishment for bringing a frivolous claim, and it can be a pretty big deterrent against individuals who bring completely unfounded claims," he says.

Public statements are a different matter.

"If an employee is posting online… whether it's defamatory comments or they're bordering into sharing confidential information, that is an area they can take some action."

Johnson says employers should respond in a way that's measured and “takes into account their potential for litigation down the road."

With sites like Glassdoor, he says, "we have to just assume that there's going to be some sort of a PR issue on certain websites, word of mouth, that we're going to need to get out in front of as employers."

He says post-termination letters reminding departing employees of their confidentiality obligations are "becoming more common." The line is usually crossed when opinion turns into disclosure.

"It's one thing to say, ‘I didn't like my experience at ABC Corp,’ but it's quite another to say, ‘Here's how management dealt with this specific issue at ABC Corp,’" he says.

One note: the Workday decision may not be the final word.

"It's still in the appeal period, so we'll see what happens," says Johnson, adding the plaintiff has 30 days from the judgment. "I don't expect that there will be a change if this went to the Court of Appeal, but I just thought I'd flag that, that it's still early days."