October 2019

A fiduciary employee is an employee who has strong loyalties to their employer during and after their employment relationship and who may hold a high position of trust and responsibility in the company. An employee’s fiduciary duty may not flow directly from an employment contract. It can exist from the nature or the essence of the employee’s relationship with his or her employer. It is already established that a fiduciary’s duty to his or her employer does not cease following the end of the employment relationship. Soliciting business from former clients may be considered a breach of that duty depending…

The answer: it depends. Upon dismissal, employees have an ongoing obligation to mitigate their damages. In certain circumstances, such a duty requires employees to return to work. In Gent v. Strone Inc., the Superior Court of Justice determined that the employee failed to appropriately mitigate his damages as he had an obligation to return to work under the circumstances. The employee was a fifty-three-year-old Health and Safety Training Specialist who had worked for the company for more than 22 years. He was temporarily laid off due to lower work volume. The employee was told he’d be recalled as soon as…