Lischuk v K-Jay Electric: Exceptional Notice Beyond 24 Months

In Lischuk v K-Jay Electric Ltd, 2025 ABKB 460, Justice Angotti held that truly exceptional factors justified setting a notice period longer than the “rough upper limit” of 24 months’ pay in lieu. She also determined that, as a shareholder-employee, the plaintiff was entitled to receive his customary annual bonuses throughout that notice period.

Justice Angotti noted that, although no Alberta decision had yet awarded more than 24 months’ notice, case law treats that figure as an approximate maximum or “very upper end of the range,” not an immutable cap. She therefore concluded that reasonable notice is not subject to an absolute ceiling, but that circumstances must be sufficiently exceptional to warrant exceeding a 24-month period.

In the present case, the exceptional nature of the plaintiff’s situation lay in his 34-year tenure with the company, during which he had advanced from labourer to General Manager overseeing all day-to-day operations. By the time of his dismissal at age 58, the business he helped build had grown from a garage-based start-up into a major electrical contractor generating multi-million-dollar revenues. His firing—attributed to a “very old school mentality,” his lack of transferable experience, and slim prospects for comparable re-employment—amounted to a forced retirement from what had been his dream career.

Although the company’s bonus scheme was never documented in writing, there existed a long-standing practice of sharing annual profits with shareholder-employees through performance bonuses, share awards, and dividends. Following the plaintiff’s dismissal, bonuses and dividends ceased and profit-sharing became discretionary. Justice Angotti nevertheless found that, had his employment continued, the plaintiff would have remained entitled to bonuses during the notice period. Relying on Matthews v Ocean Nutrition Canada Ltd., 2020 SCC 26, she observed that nothing in the Unanimous Shareholders’ Agreement unambiguously curtailed that right.