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January 19, 2022 - 7:00 AM
A B.C. judge has blocked an application to allow for a charitable trust fund to be set up to help people battle wrongful dismissal cases in the courts.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Caldwell said the Jim Crerar Charitable Trust hadn't proved that creating a trust fund up to help people without the money to sue their former employers for wrongful dismissal would be beneficial to the community.
According to a Jan. 14 Supreme Court decision, the case involves 75-year-old B.C. man James Stewart Crerar, who wanted to set up a charitable trust to help those without the financial means to fight legal battles with their former employers.
The court documents say Crerar had a variety of jobs throughout his life and once found himself terminated from one of them.
"He felt he had been wrongly dismissed but had no money to hire counsel. He says that he faced the possibility or even likelihood of financial ruin and poverty," Justice Caldwell said in the decision.
However, just when Crerar was down on his luck something changed.
"By coincidence, a timely inheritance alleviated his immediate and long-term financial challenges," the decision says.
The decision doesn't say how much money Crerar inherited or when it happened, but as a person who'd never married or had kids, the 75-year-old wanted to put the money to good use.
He applied to set up the Jim Crerar Charitable Trust.
The trust would "distribute to any poor person" who required "funds for the prosecution of a wrongful dismissal claim against a former employer... as a means of alleviating his or her poverty."
The trust would be available to both unionized and non-unionized workers.
However, in applying to the courts to establish the charitable trust, the justice poked holes in the application.
The Justice said there was no definition of the phrase "poor person."
The decision said there are four aims or purposes that are accepted to set up a legitimate charitable trust: relief of poverty, advancement of education, advancement of religion, and other purposes beneficial to the community.
The Justice said there's nothing to suggest the trust would guarantee immediate, short-term assistance that people would need if they were fired from their employment.
"I find that this is not a charitable trust by way of the (category)... relief of poverty," Justice Caldwell said.
The Justice then dismissed the argument that there is a need for such a trust.
The decision says Crerar has often thought about other people in a similar position to his that couldn't afford lawyers to fight their fair dismissal cases.
Crerar says in the decision "that there were many employees who ended up in his situation."
However, that wasn't good enough for the judge.
"There is no evidence in the material regarding any community of individuals who find themselves in similar circumstances," Justice Caldwell ruled.
"No evidence was provided regarding the presence or absence of other alternatives available to such persons. Access to justice might be available by way of contingency arrangements, public advocacy options, or even pro bono services provided by lawyers or law students, or it might not."
While the justice didn't know whether there were any other options for those fired who couldn't afford a lawyer, he still wasn't swayed.
The Justice then dismissed Crerar's application to set up the charitable trust adding: "it fails to establish that it is beneficial to the community."
Read the full decision here.
READ MORE: Judge awards Kelowna man $100K in wrongful dismissal case
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