The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former employee of Toronto-Manulife Financial Corp., seeking summary judgment for wrongful dismissal.
According to the court decision dated Aug. 31, Elisabeth English, a senior customer relationship manager, group savings and retirement, at Manulife, handed in her resignation in September 2016, amid the insurer’s conversion to a new computer system. After the insurer decided to halt the conversion in October of that year, English sought to rescind her retirement notice.
Manulife declined English’s request to withdraw her notice, and she subsequently sued.
The case raised the legal question of “whether an employee who has resigned her position of employment by way of a notice of retirement may later rescind her written notice of retirement,” the court stated in its decision.
Ultimately, the court sided with the firm, ruling that Manulife could have allowed English to withdraw her resignation, but that it wasn’t required to do so.
The insurer was silent about her request. “But silence does not equate to acceptance,” the court stated.