A group of 19 ex-Northlands cashiers will be allowed to sue for defamation in a $9.7 million lawsuit against their former employer.
After reserving their decision earlier this week, the Court of Appeal (COA) of Alberta has dismissed an appeal by Northlands to remove defamation from what is also a wrongful dismissal case.
The 19 plaintiffs were part of a group of 38 Northlands cashiers fired on Oct. 5, 2015 when the company made the decision to terminate all parking staff.
Northlands convinced cashiers were stealing
Northlands claimed more than $1 million in revenue was discovered missing and possibly stolen and said it traced the losses to its parking services department.
The company said an audit found money was being skimmed from between 12 and 19 per cent of all transactions.
The same day parking staff were fired, a notice was sent to all employees explaining the decision to terminate the cashiers and to outsource future parking services.
According to the COA decision, the notice acknowledged that not everyone in parking services was part of the problem, but stated many people in the department were participating in the thefts or aware of the issue.
The decision notes that Northlands repeated the contents of this internal notice during “various media interviews.”
“The loss was of such significance that we needed to react quickly. And we did,” former Northlands CEO Tim Reid told CTV News in an interview on Oct. 9, 2015. Reid resigned as CEO in January 2018.
Establishing defamation
An Alberta judge had already dismissed Northlands application to remove defamation from the lawsuit. The COA decision released Friday upholds that ruling.
The decision states in order to establish defamation, “a plaintiff must prove that the alleged defamatory words were published to at least one other person besides the plaintiff; that they would tend to lower the reputation of the plaintiff in the eyes of a reasonable person.”
Northlands argued that since none of the cashiers are individually identified in the Oct. 5, 2015 notice, that they cannot bring forward a claim for defamation.
The judge cited a Supreme Court of Canada case (Bou Malhab v. Diffusion Metromedia CMR Inc., 2011) which noted that “attacks on a group can affect the reputation of an individual member of the group.”
The case will now proceed to trial but no start date has been set.
A statement sent to CTV News Friday said "the appeal decision today was part of a pre-trial motion on one part of the suit. It remains active and proceeding to trial. Since the matter is still proceeding to trial, we are unable to comment further while the matter is still before the courts."
