Punitive Damages For Political Firing

 

A public servant gives three decades to the province, then gets fired without cause on the very day a government is about to fall. The BC Supreme Court doesn’t just disagree with how it was handled; it finds the termination was politically motivated and meant to turn a non-partisan employee into a convenient scapegoat. We talk through what that finding really means in wrongful dismissal law, why the court awards significant punitive damages, and how the decision sends a clear warning that public servants are not political props.

We also dig into the details that should make any listener who pays taxes pay attention: severance that appears to be legally owed gets withheld for months while pressure is applied to sign away the right to sue. Then we step back and ask the uncomfortable question about accountability, because the defendant isn’t a political party, it’s the Crown in right of British Columbia, meaning the costs and damages come out of the public purse. We also examine why a current government might still choose to deny improper motive and defend the case all the way through a long trial.

From there, we shift to estate law in British Columbia and a fascinating WESA section 58 “curative provision” case about wills. A couple plans mirror wills with a lawyer, but the woman dies before signing and the only pre-death draft carries the partner’s name, while a corrected version is created after death. We explain what counts as a reliable “record” of testamentary intentions, why judges can cure some defects but cannot validate a will based only on what people say happened, and what this means for anyone who has been putting off their estate planning.

If you found this useful, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review. What part worries you more: political firings funded by taxpayers or the risk of an unfinished will ending up in court?

 

Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan is live on CFAX 1070 every Thursday at 12:30 p.m. It’s also available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

 

Legally Speaking June 11, 2026

Adam Stirling [00:00:00] It’s time for Legally Speaking, joined as always with Michael Mulligan, Barrister and Solicitor with Mulligan Defence Lawyers. Afternoon, Michael, how are we doing?

Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:07] Hey, good afternoon. I’m doing great. Always good to be here.

Adam Stirling [00:00:10] Interesting items on the agenda today. Up first, it says BC ordered to pay aggravated and punitive damages over the firing of a public servant for political purposes. What happened?

Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:21] So there’s a lot going on in this case, and listeners may recall this decision, which was a Victoria case and then the decision just came out this week. The particular case was a claim for wrongful dismissal by a career public servant who had worked for the provincial government for some 30 years. And she was fired without cause on June 29th, 2017. And the significance of that date is that it’s also the date where the Christy Clark and the PC Liberal Party lost confidence vote in the legislature, and that was the end of the Liberal government, the beginning of Horgan, okay?

Adam Stirling [00:01:04] Yes.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:01:04] And all of this had to do with the, again, listeners may recall, very unfortunate handling of an issue with respect to the Ministry of Health and allegations that there had been improper release of information that led to the improper firing of a bunch of other public servants who worked there at the time. That led eventually to a report by Ombudsperson that came out in April of 2017 that was entitled to misfire the 2012 Ministry of Health Employment Termination and Related Matters, finding that they’d been improperly accused of doing this, and that led to one of the people involved committing suicide. So a terribly handled background. And this particular case came out of this claim brought by this 30-year career public servant. And it’s important to remember when you use that term, so the 30- year career public servants, most of the people that work for the government are not political appointees. They just work for the Government, whoever the Government might be. They do their job, whoever it might be, and this woman was in that category. But what the judge found occurred is that the I’m head of the public service who is a political appointment decided to fire her on this very day that the government was about to fall and be replaced, with an effort the judge found in order to suggest that she may have been responsible for the mishandling of that firing and the suicide and all the very negative political consequences of that; found that the decision to fire this public servant, in this way, at that time, was politically motivated.

Adam Stirling [00:02:53] hmm.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:02:53] And the judge had very little patience for that conclusion. Finding that, it was necessary to send a clear message to the defendant, and I’ll come to a moment in terms of who the defendant is.

Adam Stirling [00:03:06] yeah.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:03:06] That public servants are not to be used as pawns for political purposes and found that the defendant took advantage of the power imbalance, making the plaintiff into a political scapegoat, firing her in a timing and in a way that might have caused people to think that she was the one who made this terrible decision and then handling of the firing of the other employees rather than a political decision made by the then government. So that’s how it was a politically motivated, firing, which had very serious consequences for this woman. She was fired from a job of 30 years. That had all kinds of implications for her. And the judge concluded that all of that was so bad that it called for punitive damages to be awarded against the defendant, and it amounted to a total of $250,000. Now there are a few things to break out about this that I think are just important to know. Other elements of it included the fact that the government had, at the time, decided to withhold the regular severance payment she was entitled to, when you fire somebody like that as a government public servant with no cause, she didn’t allege they did anything wrong, they just fired her, they can do that, but there are provisions, regulations that set out how much. Severance a person would be entitled to based on like how long they’ve worked there for and she would be there for 30 years so she was entitled legally to the maximum amount of severance that somebody could be awarded and it’s not a matter of discretion, it’s right there in the regulations. So well it’s this, do the math that’s what you’re entitled to. Despite that fact, the government decided to withhold the money, i think it was for some 15 or so months, trying to get her to sign off saying she would agree not to sue. In order to get paid she never did sign that and eventually after that many months, they just paid her anyways because that’s what they were legally required to do. And so one of the other things the judge criticized the government for was that without any legal authority for doing so or any even fig leaf of legal justification, tried to use this mandatory payments to get her to sign off for the agreement, not to sue them, having been fired for political reasons. So very bad conduct. The judge really had no time for any of this. Now that’s the background of it. But I mentioned one of issues here is who is the defendant? Well, the defendant is not the Liberal Party of British Columbia, nor the political actors that decided to fire her for that reason and in that way, according to the judge. The defendant in the case is his Majesty the King and right of British Columbia. So the entity being sued, the defendant, is the province of British Columbia.

Adam Stirling [00:05:59] Ahh.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:05:59] And so, let there be no misunderstanding, the $250,000 award for this high-handed conduct, motivated for political purposes by the former liberal government, provincially, is being paid for by all of us, the province. Now, the other thing, and this I think really is important because you have to really bear down on what’s going on here.

Adam Stirling [00:06:21] Yeah.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:06:21] One of the things that Judge summarizes, it’s paragraph 164 of the decision, is a summary of the defendant’s position. That is the defendant being the province of British Columbia, right? And so how you’re defending these cases is also a political decision at the end of the day. What is the current government doing? You could, as the Attorney General, have said, we are going to settle this, this is a meritorious claim. This woman was treated atrociously. Pay her. They didn’t. The current government defended this claim and their position, to be clear, of the province of British Columbia, is they defended admits that there is no evidence of dishonesty or improper motive on its part. And goes on to set out how it denied that these things occurred and denied that she should be paid aggravated or punitive damages, claiming that there is no evidence of any improper purpose, hence the litigation. And so that’s, I think, really important context. The current government, although they were, of course, as you might expect, critical of the former government for how they handled this firing and the suicide that resulted and all of that.

Adam Stirling [00:07:31] Yeah.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:07:31] Have gone on to defend this claim, denying that there was any evidence that anything improper occurred here, and forced this matter to proceed to trial. The trial, by the way, when you’re looking at it, went on for days and days and days. January, multiple days, 2026 April 2026 February, on and on it goes until finally we got this decision that came out just this week. And so listeners should ask themselves, why? Why would you do that, right?

Adam Stirling [00:08:03] hmm.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:08:03] And bearing in mind what the background is, so if you if you hear the government now crowing about oh, hey You know the toast terrible you know the former government liberals had done this or that and fired this one for political reasons and you know, the explanation was they provided that was provided in court by One of the political appointments who made that decision to fire her and that day was disbelieved by the judge not accepted by the judge, the explanation proffered, finding that it was for political reasons. If you hear criticism of that, just bear in mind that the government decided to defend all of this and deny it all and litigate it all. That’s what they did, and it led to the decision. The other thing I think is notable, in that context, when I read this thing, one of other things that was at issue in this litigation, was the legal bills this woman had been required to run up dealing with all of these claims and issues and whether she’d be compensated for them and how much she should be compensating for. As you as listeners may be aware, at the end of a civil case there is usually the principle is that sort of the winning party costs would follow the cause. Like if you win, you would get some of your legal fees reimbursed. If you’ve sued somebody for no good reason and lose, they’d go the other way, right? It’s to encourage people to sort things out. Here, there can be issues about how much should those costs be, right? And here, one of the interesting things is the case ends with this. The plaintiff is asked to speak to costs following the release of these reasons. The parties remain free to reach their own agreement resolving costs. If either party wishes to make further submissions on costs, they may request to make additional written submissions on that. One of the other interesting things to watch just to that end is the judge will say, well, you too can sort this out in terms of how much of this woman’s costs should be paid for given this decision. It’ll be interesting to see whether the government perhaps, I don’t know whether it’s a hint by the trial judge or not, in terms of what the right thing might be to do here, given her conclusions that the actions of the government were described as high-handed, malicious, arbitrary, and so on, whether there should be full and proper compensation for those things or whether you should continue to deny and litigate that. So it is a worthy read in terms of the postscript for a really bad series of events in British Columbia in terms how they were handled. It is a rebuke of the government’s, the day’s handling of it and rejecting the explanation provided for why this woman was fired when she was right on the eve of the Government then falling in the context of there being at the time, political heat, over this matter. So it paints an entirely unflattering picture of how that decision was made and why it was made for what the judge concludes to be political purposes. But again, it is a little bit of a head-scratcher for me reading this thing, why the current government would have denied all of those things were problematic and proceeded to litigate this thing all the way to the decision that came out today. So that’s the latest from the B.C. Supreme Court on the termination of the public servant in an effort to, as the judge found, turn her into a scapegoat for the firing and suicide and so on, that flowed from that flawed handling of that initial allegation. That’s latest from Supreme Court.

Adam Stirling [00:11:30] All right, let’s take our first break. Legally Speaking, we’ll continue right after this.

[00:11:35] COMMERCIAL.

[00:11:35] All right. We’re back on the air here at CFAX 1070 as we continue Legally Speaking, joined as always by Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers. Michael, before the break, we were talking about the latest in a year’s long saga involving the BC government. Up next on the agenda, it says a draft mirror will give legal effect. I don’t know what a draft mirror will is.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:11:56] Well, we will know soon. So this case is a really interesting one, and it involves the powers that a judge has to give effect to the testamentary intentions of somebody, like what they wanted to do with their things upon their death, okay? Now, traditionally, the approach that came from the English approach has been quite formalistic in terms of what’s required for there to be a valid will. For example, the will has to be in writing. It has to be witnessed by two people. The witnesses can’t be beneficiaries to the will. Things like this and the law had been, in the past, that if it didn’t meet the various requirements then that’s just not a will. Sorry, it has a meaning. But the Will’s Estates and Succession Act tried to liberalize that somewhat to deal with circumstances where some formal requirement was like missed, only one person signed it, or, you know, oh it turned out that person was a beneficiary or something, but it was clear to everyone that, well, this is what the person wanted to do, but, you know you just didn’t get it quite right. And so section 58 of that act gives a judge authority to effectively sort of give effect to a record of the person’s intent that doesn’t meet all the legal requirements of a will. And doing that, a judge has to sort of sort out, you know, is this authentic? This is real, is this real? And did it represent the actual fixed and final intentions of the persons in terms of what they wanted to happen with their stuff. Now, here’s the background of this case, it’s a really very interesting fact pattern. The background is you had this couple; they had been legally married for a number of years. They then got divorced but almost within a few months reconciled and were then back in a marriage-like relationship for many years. There’s really no dispute about that. They had no children and the deceased, the woman, had no other children and so her possible beneficiaries would likely be either her spouse or her siblings, right? And then in the few months before she tragically passed away, she suggested to her spouse that they should get their wills in order and various other things like power of attorney and representation agreement for each of them. And she took the lead in doing that I made an appointment with a lawyer and the couple went and met with the lawyer together and the lawyer took very extensive notes and indicated that the woman had did most of the talking and the fellow to sort of sat back sort of the secondary party to what was being discussed. But they were clear on what they wanted. They wanted to create what were referred to as draft or mirror wills, like essentially saying, we’re each leaving our stuff to one another, right, if we pass away. We each want to appoint the other person as the executor.

Adam Stirling [00:14:53] Okay.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:14:53] And there were a few minor differences, like for example, the woman who was deceased wanted to give a specific gift to the niece of her spouse, her jewelry, so they wanted to have that in there, but basically they were going to be the same with those, you know, very minor changes. And so having met with the couple, the lawyer drafted up a draft will, draft power Attorney and Draft Representation Agreement. And the way the lawyer drafted these things was to use the name of the woman as the person in the draft for the power of attorney and the representation agreement but happened to use husband’s name in the draft of the will. But it was clear that this was supposed to be, it was going to be the same, just like flipping the names around, because for example, in the draft, even though the draft used the husband’s name, like this is the will of fill in the husband’s names, it had, for example is one of the notes, bracket, woman’s name will only, clarifying that jewelry goes to the niece, right? So it’s clear they were intended to be the same thing. So the lawyer sends out the draft and then there’s some further discussions about it. The lawyer sends another draft back in the same way and then shortly after the lawyer sends out a second, the June draught with the minor corrections in it, sadly on July the 4th, you guessed it, the woman passes away unexpectedly.

Adam Stirling [00:16:20] Wow.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:16:20] So now here’s the problem. I mentioned that WESA provision that allows a court to cure a deficit in a record of the person’s intent. The problem is that there was no draft will for the woman. There was a kind of a draft will with the man’s name in it and notes that indicated clearly to be the same for her, but it wasn’t. After she passed away, the funeral home wanted a copy of the will. And so the man contacted the lawyer’s office and they sent a thing, I think it might even be labelled post-death draft, kind of a, well, here’s what was agreed to, what she wanted, but what they, and they put her name in it, but you know, indicated this is after her death, Right?

Adam Stirling [00:17:07] Yes.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:17:09] The problem is that it is still a requirement, even though WESA exists, that there be a record for a judge to, like, fix or give effect to. And so this is the legal question. Can this post-death draft, like produced after she died putting her name in it, can that be a record or document or writing that the judge can kind of fix and give effect to? Because as the judge pointed out, the power for a judge to kind of fix something like, hey, only one person signed this, right, it turned out the person was giving the person who signed it their hockey card collection, so they weren’t beneficiary, they couldn’t really be a witness. Those kinds of problems. It is still a requirement for there to be like a will that the judge can kind of fix under that section, that there be a document. It’s got to be in writing. Even if you’re satisfied like that person wanted something to get a bunch of witnesses or came say, yes, we all listened to you know grandma at the hospital saying that she wanted Bobby to have her hockey-card collection, right? You’re going to say yes, but she said. That’s not enough. A judge can’t just say well, she said it so therefore I’m doing it. They don’t have authority to do that. You’ve got to find it somewhere in the loft to fix. And so the judge found that the fact that the, you know, you could have a lawyer produce this draft saying this is a post-death draught of what she had intended based on what I sent out in my notes and so on. Here it is, I printed this off after she passed away sadly, here you are, that if that was something that the judge could just correct, it really amounts to the judge just being able to say, well, I guess if grandma said that we’re just going to do it, and that’s not how it works, right? You know, there are good reasons why you want these things to be in writing, and that section doesn’t allow a judge to just decide what should happen. They have some authority to fix things, but not that.

Adam Stirling [00:19:09] hm.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:19:09] And so, what do you do with that? Everyone agreed. I mean, the other relatives, like the spouse, like, the siblings, didn’t even contest this. They were given notice. They weren’t showing up to argue otherwise, right? There really wasn’t a fight about it. But what’s the judge to do? And it’s, I think, a smart approach to it. The judge said, well, I’m not without a remedy here, because on the particular facts of this case, and the issue is, is there some record that could represent the fixed intention and be relied upon? The judge found that, yeah, there is a record. The record is going to be in the form of that, and the document is going to in the form of the draft will that the lawyer produced while the woman was still alive. It had her husband’s name on it. Like, if you just looked at it, it would have said the will of him, right? But very clear that this was what she wanted, even a note in there about the jewelry. And so the judge found that is a document, that’s a record, and the judge could use that as something that the judge would be able to kind of correct and give force to, because it is a thing, not just printed off after she died with her name on it. And so on that basis, the judge had no problem finding that that was authentic. She clearly asked for those things, she reviewed it, she sent it back to the lawyer with the minor changes. Nobody was suggesting this was some made-up thing. She was the person driving all of this stuff and giving the instructions to the lawyer and got a copy of it. And so the judge was able to find that yeah, there’s something here. I can get a hold of get my hands on. It’s not just her saying something or the lawyer’s notes about saying something there was something in writing, that. And so, the effect of that is that the judge found that you can modify that to put her name on it. And do it was intended there and so her wishes will be carried out right down to the jewellery going to the intended person; but The takeaway from all of this is just once again the importance of having a proper valid will, so that your beneficiaries don’t wind up spending time in court hoping that some section somewhere will allow a judge to fix up what went on and people need to know as well that just telling somebody something isn’t necessarily going to make it so. A judge can’t just do what even if they’re quite sure that that’s what the person said they wanted to happen to the jewelry in their estate, that’s not likely to do it. And so once again, it’s a reminder to get on with it. If you’re putting it off, you never know what might happen to you. And if you get a will done, you’ll save your beneficiaries a whole lot of rancor, time, and discontent. So that’s the latest in the BC Supreme Court and what can and cannot be fixed as a will.

Adam Stirling [00:21:47] Michael Mulligan, Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally Speaking during the second half of our second hour every Thursday. Thank you so much. Pleasure as always.

Michael T. Mulligan [00:21:54] Thanks so much, always great to be here.

Adam Stirling [00:21:55] All right. Quick break. News is next.

Automatically Transcribed on June 16, 2026 – MULLIGAN DEFENCE LAWYERS