Court refused to rewrite the clause, calling the fix far too extensive
A British Columbia aerospace company that tried to send a dismissed senior manager out the door with three weeks' pay has been ordered to pay him nine months instead, after the BC Supreme Court ruled on May 1, 2026, that its termination clause was so badly drafted it was legally meaningless.
In Kular v. Avcorp Industries Inc. (LateCoere Aerostructures Canada), Justice Branch found the clause was "void for uncertainty," noting that "neither the Court nor the parties could make sense of its language or the parties' intentions by looking at the words themselves or the surrounding circumstances." The decision wiped out the contractual cap the employer was relying on and reset Harman Kular's entitlement to common law reasonable notice.
Kular, a 56-year-old supply chain leader, was dismissed without cause on December 17, 2024, after just under three years with Avcorp. The defendant only provided the plaintiff with three weeks' pay in lieu of notice – the basic requirement under s. 63 of the BC Employment Standards Act.
The employer pointed to clause 9.2 of the Second Agreement to cap its exposure. The court found the clause unintelligible, including the line that the additional severance "shall be equal to one the obligations outlined" in the ESA.
A second problem compounded it. "Clause 9.2.4 references a 'Section 7.2' that does not even exist in the ESA. The defendant suggested that...
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