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TevlinGleadle Employment Law Strategies provides a complete range of strategic wrongful dismissal and employment related negotiation and litigation services to employees and employers from its offices on False Creek in Vancouver, BC.

Murray Tevlin and Dan Gleadle each have over 25 years experience as lawyers representing employees and employers at all levels of trial and appeal courts in British Columbia - right up to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Working with an efficient team of specialist lawyers, staff and consultants, we offer our clients the full advantage of leading technology, and a project based selection of the appropriate professionals to achieve creative solutions to employment matters - issues which are often sensitive and always important.

We have extensive experience in strategic planning, achieving real results for our clients in all of BC's leading industries.

Our legal services include:

  Wrongful Dismissal
  Executive Employment Contracts

  Shareholder Disputes
  Planning & Negotiation
  Alternative Dispute Resolution & Mediation
  Arbitration, Trials, Appeals

  Injunctions
  Confidentiality & Non-Competition issues
  Merger & Acquisitions Consulting
  Employment Class Actions
  Pension Class Actions
  Human Rights in the Workplace

TevlinGleadle has a blog for discussion of issues relating to employment and wrongful dismissal law.

Western Star Pension Class Action Settlement Approved

TevlinGleadle is pleased to announce that the court has approved the settlement and steps are underway to complete.

Further details are available on our "class action" page.

Supreme Court of Canada

RBC Dominion v. Merrill Lynch

In an important employment law decision rendered on October 9, 2008, the SCC overturned the decision of the BC Court of Appeal, and reinstated the trial decision in its most significant aspect.

This decision deals with the duties owed by employees to their employer when in the process of leaving to join a competing business. The Supreme Court of Canada held that even non-fiduciary senior management employees had signficant duties to avoid orchestrating a wrongful mass departure to a competitor, and that in the event of breach, substantial damages might be required.

Louise Borsato v. Atwater Insurance

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In this wrongful dismissal action we were lawyers for a long service manager of an insurance agency.  The issue was a contract that she negotiated with a previous owner (now deceased) where she agreed to work 30 hours per week.  Over time she worked longer hours, always doing what was required to ensure the proper operation of the agency.  When the agency was sold six years later, the new owner did not inquire about her weekly hours of work.  She continued working for the new owner for approximately 10 years working various hours with no complaints from the new owner. 

In 2006 the new owner “discovered” she was sometimes scheduling herself to work 4 day weeks rather than 5 day weeks.  The new owner then unilaterally reduced her salary by 1/5.  At issue was whether the plaintiff’s practice of working longer hours had become a term of her contract such that she was required to work 40 hours or 5 days per week.  The trial judge determined that the plaintiff had never received any consideration for agreeing to work 40 hours per week or 5 days per week and that the original contracted 30 hour week contract was all that was legally required. 

The employer’s conduct in reducing the plaintiff’s salary unilaterally was held to constitute a wrongful, albiet constructive dismissal.  The employer was ordered to pay the plaintiff the salary that had been withheld plus damages based on a 15 month notice period.

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