Two more former Heenan Blaikie LLP legal assistants are suing the fallen firm, bringing the total number of claims filed in Toronto by the firm’s support staff to seven.
In total, the seven secretaries are suing for close to $1.1 million, according to court documents obtained by Precedent.
The latest two assistants to launch suits — ages 53 and 61 — have not found employment since Heenan Blaikie collapsed in February. They are seeking $260,000 and $270,000 in unpaid severance, additional notice and punitive damages.
According to their statements of claim, when they started at Heenan Blaikie, the firm promised to recognize the years they worked at their previous workplace when calculating seniority. (Another secretary suing Heenan Blaikie has made the same claim.)
Before joining Heenan Blaikie, one assistant says she worked at another firm for five years, and the other says she worked elsewhere for seven years. But when the firm collapsed in February, it did not include those extra years in their severance packages.
And so, the lawsuits claim, Heenan Blaikie must provide an additional five and six weeks of severance, just to meet the minimum amount required by law. (The Employment Standards Act (ESA) forces employers to pay out one week of severance pay per year of service, as long as the employee has worked there for five years).
“These are their basic entitlements and what they bargained for,” says Christine Westlake, an associate at Koskie Minksy LLP and the lawyer handling both suits. “They’re just trying to hold their former employer up to that bargain.” (The assistants allowed Westlake to comment for this story on the condition that they would not be named.)
Each assistant is also asking for 14 and 16 months of total notice pay, well above what the ESA requires.
Westlake says her clients deserve a longer notice period because, as older employees, they need that time to find another job. “As much as age shouldn’t factor into these things, it does play a factor in their ability to find work.”
She adds that when Heenan Blaikie fired more than 160 support staff at once it flooded an already crowded legal assistant job market.
“They’re not out suing for the moon, the stars and everything,” says Westlake, adding that, because her clients are still unemployed, they need help in meeting “their monthly bills, like we all have, until they find other employment.”
Both suits are also seeking $25,000 in punitive damages, on the grounds that Heenan Blaikie misrepresented the health of its business in the weeks leading up its dissolution.
In January, for instance, one assistant heard rumours that suggested “it was just a matter of time until Heenan sank like the Titanic,” according to her statement of claim. Then, when she took those concerns to Kip Daechsel, the firm’s co-managing partner, she says he told her “the firm had turned a corner” and that “she should not pay any attention to such rumours.” About two weeks later, the firm announced its dissolution. According to the statement of claim, Daechsel’s comments were “made negligently, without regard to the truth, or alternatively, were intentionally false.”
Each statement of claim also alleges that former Heenan Blaikie partners have reclaimed capital they invested into the firm “in preference to [the assistants’] minimum entitlements.”
Heenan Blaikie has not filed a statement of defence in either lawsuit.
Now that more than 20 days have passed since Westlake filed the lawsuits in August, she can ask the court to note Heenan Blaikie in default.
But Westlake says that Robb Beeman, a former partner in Heenan Blaikie’s Calgary office, contacted her to say the firm was “contemplating retaining counsel to defend.” As a courtesy, she has given Heenan Blaikie until October 27 before she takes any steps to note the firm in default.
Beeman, now a partner at McLennan Ross LLP, did not respond to Precedent’s request for an interview.
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