Legal Blog

Common Employer Liability

O’Reilly v. ClearMRI Solutions Ltd. 2021 Ont CA

One corporation in a group of related corporations can be held liable to a claim from an employee nominally employed by another of those corporations. This is the common employer theory. However, a simple interrelationship is not enough; the employee must show that the target corporation also had an employer-employee relationship with the employee. A written agreement will be relevant, but the real question is where effective control over the employee resided. In this case, the employee adduced no evidence of a relationship between him and the parent corporation and was unsuccessful.

Written by Jonathan Speigel, the founding partner of Speigel Nichols Fox LLP, leads the litigation and construction practices.