'Abusive, unfair, cruel': Scathing B.C. court decision slams wrongful dismissal of senior

A B.C. senior has been awarded more than $200,000 in a wrongful dismissal case, with the judge describing the employer's conduct as abusive, vicious, cruel, and profoundly harmful.

China Southern Airlines has been ordered to pay Paul Chu, who is now 71 and working as a driver for DoorDash, damages totalling $208,053 as compensation for his termination.

"The plaintiff alleges that beginning in February 2018, CSA engaged in broad and sustained pattern of bad faith abusive conduct, including unfair discipline, insincere warnings, manufactured cause, and public embarrassment. He alleges that CSA’s bad faith conduct has continued throughout the course of the litigation," the judge wrote, summarizing Chu's claim.

The company, for its part, argued that Chu was fired for cause citing "incompetence" and "time theft" and saying he “consistently failed to meet the company’s expectations”.

In a lengthy, scathing decision on Jan. 5, Justice Frits Verhoeven laid out his reasons for finding in Chu's favour and for awarding a significant amount in aggravated and punitive damages.

DEMOTIONS, DISCIPLINE, DISMISSAL

Chu began working for the airline on contract in 2008, the court heard, helping set up its operations in Vancouver. In 2011, he was hired as the company's marketing and business development manager, a position he held until management changed.

Prior to January of 2018, the judge described Chu's record as "impeccable." However, things changed soon after Rui "Jocelyn" Zhang became the general manager, according to the decision.

"Ms. Zhang was immediately dismissive of the plaintiff's role and responsibilities. The plaintiff was excluded from management meetings that he had previously attended. The marketing department that he headed was soon eliminated," the court heard.

"Rather than simply dismissing the plaintiff, Ms. Zhang embarked upon a campaign designed to manufacture cause for dismissal or induce the plaintiff to resign."

Chu, the judge said, was demoted for the first time in March of 2018 when he was transferred into a customer service role and saw his salary cut by about 25 per cent.

Seven months later, he was demoted again and deployed to work at the Vancouver International Airport.

The judge said that Chu struggled in the last role he held with the company, one which was markedly different than his previous one, which placed significant physical demands on him, and for which he received minimal training.

"The fact that the plaintiff was slow, made mistakes, and had difficulty learning new, complex tasks in a fast-paced stressful environment is hardly surprising. The (employer) could not possibly have expected any other result. The (employer's) conduct in assigning the plaintiff to this job and its subsequent treatment of him in relation to it was cruel and insensitive," Verhoeven wrote.

The judge found that Chu was set up to fail and then disciplined – often publicly in a manner described as "humiliating and embarrassing" – when he did not succeed. In one instance, according to the court decision, Zhang threw a computer mouse at Chu while yelling at him in front of colleagues.

Chu was made to sign letters of reprimand that he did not agree with and in February of 2019, after failing two competency tests and being told he would be put on probation, he was fired.

The official termination letter listed four specific grounds, which the judge said amounted to "minor, unintentional mistakes" that were inconsequential.

The employer levelled additional allegations during the course of the trial, however, those were similarly dismissed by the judge.

"The defendant has singularly failed to establish just cause for dismissal without notice. All of its allegations are either entirely unsupported by evidence or lacking in any merit."

COMPENSATION

The judge found that Chu was terminated without reason and without sufficient notice, and ordered the company to pay him the equivalent of 20 months' wages. The $747 that Chu earned in 2020 was deducted from the amount for a total of $58,053.

In making this determination, the court considered Chu's age and how difficult it was for him to find comparable employment elsewhere. With pandemic restrictions on travel, employment in the travel and airline industries became scarcer. While he did apply for the rare vacancies he found in his field, he was not hired.

With his applications for those jobs rejected, he applied to work at McDonald's and was also turned away.

Although Chu was 68 when he was fired, he could not afford to retire and planned to work for at least five more years. Now 71, he makes ends meets as a food delivery driver, the court heard.

AGGRAVATED AND PUNITIVE DAMAGES

Verhoeven outlined a number of ways the employer's treatment of Chu breached its "duty of good faith and fair dealing" and was "duplicitous and unfair," awarding $50,000 as compensation for the mental distress.

That distress, the judge found, lasted for a considerable period of time.

"The (employer's) reprehensible conduct extended from one year prior to termination to the present, a period of almost five years. Its abusive conduct was planned and deliberate throughout," according to the decision.

As one example of how the legal proceedings perpetuated and prolonged Chu's distress, the judge noted that China Southern Airlines made additional and false allegations in court documents. In its response to Chu's lawsuit, the employer said – among other things – that Chu committed or plotted to commit fraud, that he perpetrated sexual harassment in the workplace and that he had stolen "several" model airplanes.

Verhoeven noted that even though these allegations were withdrawn they were made in a document that was publicly available and would have caused Chu personal and reputational harm.

"These false, insulting allegations constituted a wholesale attack on the plaintiff’s conduct, his character, his years of service, his value as an employee, and his worth as a person. They would have been predictably harmful to the plaintiff," Verhoeven wrote.

In awarding Chu $100,000 in punitive damages designed to denounce and deter similar conduct, Verhoeven also cited these allegations as an example of the company's bad faith conduct during the legal case.

"After termination, the employer made a deliberate decision to respond to his legal claim with vicious, vindictive, and unfounded allegations that it knew or ought to have known could not be supported," the decision says, adding that the employer deliberately stalled the proceedings.

"The plaintiff was highly vulnerable. It has taken him nearly five years to pursue his claims for reasonable compensation, and to clear his name. The defendant’s conduct has been profoundly harmful to the plaintiff," the judge concluded.