The Alberta Court of Appeal recently cleaned up a mess made at one of its trials, writes Laura Paglia in an editorial in The Globe and Mail.
Kurt Soost was a top-performing stockbroker who was fired by Merrill Lynch in good faith in May 2001 for a number of breaches of the firm’s compliance policies. Notwithstanding the breaches, the trial judge found that Merrill Lynch did not have cause, and awarded Mr. Soost $2.2 million in damages, $600,000 of which amounted to damages for a one-year notice period the judge felt he was entitled to.
The damages award at trial was a surprisingly bold new high watermark for compensation paid to a fired stockbroker – and $1.6-million of it was wrong.
Read the full editorial here.