Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Closure and relocation of the manufacturing facility over 100 km away treated as unilateral termination without notice, giving rise to wrongful dismissal claims for long-service workers with an average age of 54.
• Non-compliance with the Employment Standards Act, 2000, including unpaid wages, unpaid vacation pay, failure to provide statutory notice or termination pay, and failure to maintain or pay out required benefits.
• Direct age discrimination against an older workforce, with termination decisions found to target age and tenure in breach of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
• Entitlement to substantial common law notice assessed under Bardal factors, calculated on approximately four weeks’ pay per year of service, subject to mitigation.
• Awards of human rights damages and aggravated damages to each plaintiff in response to discriminatory conduct, bad-faith termination, and the withholding of statutory and contractual entitlements.
• Imposition of joint and several liability on all corporate defendants and the individual principal under the common employer doctrine and oppression principles in the Ontario Business Corporations Act.

Factual background

The plaintiffs were long-serving employees at Interspec Systems Ltd., working in its manufacturing facility in Rosemount, Ontario. They held various roles on the manufacturing side of the business and, as a group, had significant seniority: their average age was about 54, and their service ranged from roughly 2 to 32 years of full-time employment. Their work was performed for an interconnected group of entities controlled by the same principal, including Interspec Systems Ltd., Foundry Asset Management Inc., and 1890141 Ontario Inc. operating as VDF Vertical Business Accounts, with Foundry acting as paymaster and Interspec and VDF sharing business identity and letterhead. On September 5, 2023, the defendants closed the Rosemount manufacturing facility and relocated operations to Scarborough, approximately 106 kilometres away. The plaintiffs’ employment effectively ended at that point. They were not given working notice or pay in lieu of notice, and they were also left with unpaid wages in arrears, unpaid accrued vacation and holiday pay, and unpaid non-discretionary bonus amounts in some cases. Health and other benefits were terminated without proper continuation or compensation.

Procedural history

The plaintiffs commenced a civil action in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for wrongful dismissal, age discrimination, and related relief. The defendants were noted in default on July 19, 2024. A motion for default judgment was scheduled for May 13, 2025. At that appearance, the individual defendant, Gregor Vahramian, indicated an intention to bring a motion to set aside the noting in default, but no such motion was ever pursued despite subsequent case conferences. The plaintiffs then proceeded with a motion for default judgment supported by affidavits, including evidence from plaintiff Sean Donley, and a detailed record of the defendants’ failure to participate. Given proper service and the defendants’ inaction, the court treated the factual allegations in the statement of claim as admitted and proceeded to determine liability and quantum of damages on the basis of deemed admissions supplemented by affidavit evidence.

Legal issues

The court framed the issues under Rule 19 governing default judgment. First, it had to identify which facts were deemed admitted by virtue of the defendants’ default. Second, it had to determine whether those admitted facts, as a matter of law, entitled the plaintiffs to judgment for wrongful dismissal and human rights breaches. Third, where legal entitlement was not fully resolved by deemed admissions alone, the court had to assess whether the plaintiffs’ additional affidavit evidence, taken together with the admissions, was sufficient to prove each head of damages. Substantively, the legal issues included: whether the closure and relocation of the plant constituted termination at common law; whether there was a breach of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 regarding wages, vacation pay, statutory notice, and benefits; whether the plaintiffs had been discriminated against on the basis of age contrary to the Ontario Human Rights Code; whether aggravated (moral) damages should be awarded based on the manner of dismissal and the withholding of statutory entitlements; and whether all of the corporate defendants and the individual principal could be held jointly and severally liable as common employers and on an oppression basis under the Ontario Business Corporations Act.

Court’s analysis on liability

On liability for wrongful dismissal, the court accepted that the plaintiffs had employment relationships with all of the interconnected corporate defendants. The closure of the Rosemount facility and relocation of the workplace to Scarborough—more than 100 kilometres away—was found to be a unilateral and fundamental change in the employment relationship. In the absence of any valid contractual provision permitting such a relocation, this change amounted to a termination without cause and without notice. The court also accepted that the defendants failed to meet their statutory obligations under the Employment Standards Act. The plaintiffs had not received wages in arrears, accrued vacation pay, statutory termination or notice pay, or proper continuation or payout of benefits and contributions that the ESA treats as part of unpaid wages on termination. In addition, the court accepted that the plaintiffs were older workers with long tenure and good work histories and that they were targeted because of their age and seniority. The terminations were therefore found to constitute age-based discrimination, a prohibited ground under the Ontario Human Rights Code. No policy wording or contractual clause was at issue in the sense of an insurance or detailed written termination policy; the case instead centred on common law employment principles, the statutory minimums required by the ESA, and human rights protections.

Damages awarded

For statutory and contractual entitlements, the court awarded each plaintiff unpaid wages in arrears and unpaid vacation and holiday pay, as well as ESA pay in lieu of notice and compensation for lost or unpaid benefits. The unpaid wages in arrears totalled more than $60,000 across the group, with individual amounts ranging from roughly $2,500 to almost $12,000 per plaintiff, depending on the number of weeks of wages outstanding. The court then turned to common law notice. Applying the Bardal v. Globe & Mail factors—length of service, age, character of employment, and availability of similar employment—the judge accepted that each plaintiff was entitled to reasonable notice calculated on the basis of about four weeks per year of service, subject to mitigation efforts. Specific common law notice amounts were set out for seven of the eight plaintiffs, with figures ranging from just over $5,000 to over $140,000, depending on each individual’s tenure and circumstances, and based on the calculations and mitigation evidence in the affidavits. Beyond pure economic loss, the court addressed human rights and aggravated damages. Having found that the terminations were discriminatory on the basis of age, and that the plaintiffs were an older and thus more vulnerable workforce whose benefits were cut off without notice, the judge assessed human rights damages in the medium range and awarded $25,000 to each plaintiff. Separately, the court considered aggravated (moral) damages for the manner of dismissal. It emphasized the defendants’ refusal to pay accrued wages and ESA minimums, the unilateral termination of benefits, and other bad-faith elements of how the relationship was ended. For this reprehensible conduct, the court awarded an additional $25,000 to each plaintiff in aggravated damages.

Joint and several liability

The court then considered whether all defendants should be jointly and severally liable. Relying on the common employer doctrine, it held that Foundry Asset Management, Interspec, and VDF were sufficiently interrelated that they functioned together as the plaintiffs’ employers, regardless of corporate form or paymaster arrangements. The evidence also supported personal liability of the principal, Gregor Vahramian, because he owned and controlled the corporate defendants, made the decision to close and move the facility, personally participated in the discriminatory termination of the senior workforce, and orchestrated the transfer of business and assets to a successor “John Doe” corporation. Under the Ontario Business Corporations Act oppression remedy jurisprudence, employees owed wages can qualify as creditors and complainants. Drawing on cases such as Downtown Eatery, the court found that Mr. Vahramian’s conduct was oppressive to the plaintiffs’ reasonable expectations that the corporate affairs would be run in a way that protected their interests as employees owed wages and benefits. These findings led the court to hold all of the named defendants—corporate and individual—jointly and severally liable for the judgment.

Overall outcome

In the result, the plaintiffs succeeded entirely on their motion for default judgment. The court granted judgment for each head of claim: unpaid wages, unpaid vacation and holiday pay, ESA statutory pay in lieu of notice, compensation for lost benefits, common law pay in lieu of notice, human rights damages for age discrimination, and aggravated damages for bad-faith and high-handed termination. Taken together, the specified monetary awards for all these categories amount to approximately $937,132.41 in damages across the eight plaintiffs, with at least one plaintiff’s common law notice amount not itemized in the text, suggesting the true total may be higher. In addition, the court ordered the defendants, on a joint and several basis, to pay partial-indemnity costs of $14,161.04 inclusive of HST and disbursements. Overall, the plaintiffs were the successful party, obtaining a total monetary outcome of roughly $951,293.45 (damages plus costs) on the face of the written reasons, with joint and several liability ensuring that any one of the corporate entities or the principal can be pursued for the entire judgment.