It’s not just about the money. Increasingly, compensation packages feature complex designs that incorporate pensions and benefits along with creative bonus plans as well as stock and equity options. Defending organizations against employee claims for entitlement to these inclusions requires a multi-disciplinary approach that incorporates pension law, employment law and tax law expertise—and Hicks Morley delivers.
As a leading Canadian management-side human resources law firm, Hicks Morley is uniquely positioned to provide advice on all matters relating to pensions, benefits and compensation litigation. Our combination of litigation skills, pensions, benefits and compensation expertise and knowledge of employment law allows us to address these claims practically and efficiently. We advise on how to structure employment relationships and we are familiar with the workplace environment and employer/employee dynamics.
Clients
We act for a wide variety of employers in the private and public sectors with respect to pensions, benefits and compensation claims, claims against employers and administrators over the administration of pension and benefits plans, and employer liability for statutory benefits.
Services
Hicks Morley has represented clients on pension, benefits and compensation claims ranging from wrongful dismissal actions to multi-jurisdictional claims for employee benefits in the context of restructuring proceedings as well as human rights and Charter-based challenges.
Our experience includes:
- wrongful dismissal claims that involve claims for pension benefits including grow-in rights loss of pension contributions
- wrongful dismissal claims that involve claims to performance bonuses or entitlement to stock or other forms of equity entitlement
- Charter-based challenges to pension and benefits plans
- claims by employees for pension, insurance or other employee benefits, both pre- and post- retirement
- tax court determinations of employer liability for Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance Act contributions
- claims by surviving spouses or family members for insurance benefits, pension benefits or survivor benefits
- claims against employers and administrators with respect to the management of pension and benefits plans
- claims against financial institutions over the administration of various registered retirement plans and registered retirement accounts
- resolving non-union/union jurisdictional issues relating to pension and benefits claims
- claims against employers/administrators in the context of proceedings under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and Companies’ Creditors Arrangements Act
We provide employers with a full range of legal services covering the legal, regulatory, taxation and human resource aspects of pension plans, group benefits and compensation. Learn more.
Related Work
Examples of our work in this area include the following:
- Represented a plan administrator before the Court of Appeal for Ontario in a claim for a survivor pension which considered the test for qualifying as a common-law spouse and the administrator’s discharge provision under the Pension Benefits Act.
- Pension counsel to one of Canada’s leading steel producers in its Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act
- Represented trustees of a pension plan in a class action relating to ownership of surplus pension plan funds and administration of the pension plan and successfully resolved the matter with no liability for the trustees.
- Successfully argued on behalf of a large steel mill that the union’s unreasonable conduct meant that no compensation should be awarded to an employee.
- Represented an employer in negotiations to transform a single-employer pension plan into a jointly sponsored pension plan, requiring agreement with the union on joint governance, solvency funding relief, employer contribution limits and benefit modifications.
- Represented multiple pension plan trustees in a class action relating to ownership of surplus pension plan funds.
- Successfully represented a financial institution at trial in defending a claim relating to incentive compensation.
- Successfully represented a hospital in a judicial review application relating to jurisdiction of an arbitrator to hear a significant pension claim.
- Represented a media company plan administrator before the Ontario Superior Court and the Court of Appeal in a precedent-setting case establishing the standard for separation agreement language needed to create a pension plan assignment following a member’s marriage breakdown.