WAN v H & R BLOCK CANADA INC

The Appellant employer appealed the Applications Judge’s dismissal of its Summary Judgment Application in a wrongful dismissal Action. The Appeal was dismissed.

The Appellant sought a determination that the employee’s claim should be dismissed because the evidentiary record established cause for his termination based on alleged dishonesty, disclosure of confidential information, surreptitious workplace recordings, and post-termination misconduct. The Respondent, the employee, argued that summary determination was unsuitable because of material factual disputes and credibility issues that pervaded all alleged misconduct.

Justice Devlin found that the Applications Judge correctly determined that a Trial was required for the Action. Devlin J. held that Rule 7.3 did not permit summary disposition because the alleged misconduct raised material factual disputes and credibility issues. The Court emphasized that summary judgment requires a sufficiently reliable record to resolve the dispute fairly and justly without a trial.

Certain allegations in the case at bar depended on competing accounts and unresolved factual questions. Surreptitious recordings did not establish cause for termination as a matter of law because Alberta jurisprudence required a contextual analysis rather than a categorical rule. The significance of the recordings depended on factors such as the state of the employment relationship, the employee’s purpose, workplace policies, the nature of the information recorded, and how the recordings were used. Those issues remained contested and could not be resolved on a summary record.

Justice Devlin concluded that material factual disputes persisted across each alleged category of misconduct, and that too many relevant factors remained contested or unexplored, particularly in relation to the recordings, to determine the context of just cause without a Trial.