Legal Blog

Interpretation

Austin v. Bell Canada 2019 Ont SCJ

Class action dealing with the interpretation of a pension plan’s provisions for the calculation of the annual inflation factor. The calculation according to Bell Canada was 1% for 2017 and according to the plaintiffs was 2%. Considering that 35,000 pensioners were affected, this difference represented many millions of dollars. The provision to be interpreted was: “‘Pension Index’ means the annual percentage increase of the Consumer Price Index, as determined by Statistics Canada, during the period of November 1 to October 31 immediately preceding the date of the pension increase.” The dispute was whether the determination by Statistics Canada index related only to the consumer price index or also to the annual percentage increase. The comma between “Index” and “as” would, in the normal course, mean that the modifying phrase related to both items on the list (i.e. both the percentage increase and the consumer price index). The judge, however, looked at other rules of interpretation to determine that the Statistics Canada publication would inform only the consumer price index and that the comma was improperly placed. Poor drafting, and inadequate grammatical knowledge, almost cost Bell Canada millions of dollars.

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