Action of unionized employee injured in slip and fall dismissed against employer
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal agreed with an employer that dismissal was the proper remedy for a unionized employee’s action against it, given that a labour arbitrator rather than the courts had exclusive jurisdiction over the claim.
The Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Centre for Education, the appellant in this case, was the employer of the respondent, a teacher at Seton Elementary School in North Sydney in Cape Breton Island. Given that she belonged to the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, two collective agreements – one local and one provincial – governed her employment’s terms.
In January 2015, the respondent was heading to work when she slipped and fell in the school’s parking lot. She requested benefits relating to her injuries under both collective agreements. She received injury on duty benefits, sick leave benefits, and long-term disability benefits under the agreements’ terms.
In December 2018, the respondent filed an action seeking damages for her injuries. The employer defended against the action and filed a third-party claim against the company furnishing snow removal services at its premises at the time of the incident.
In March 2022, the appellant requested a court order allowing it to amend its defence to plead an absence of jurisdiction and, if granted, an order dismissing the respondent’s action based on lack of jurisdiction under r. 4.07(1) of the Nova Scotia Civil Procedure Rules.
In October 2023, a motion judge granted the request to amend the defence. He said that, under the collective agreements, a labour arbitrator had exclusive jurisdiction over the respondent’s action and that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear a unionized employee’s civil claim against her employer. Instead of dismissing the claim, he went on to stay the action for a two-year period.
On appeal, the employer alleged that the judge committed an error by failing to dismiss the respondent’s action. If the labour arbitrator rather than the court had jurisdiction over the claim, the court could not hear the claim or grant a stay, the employer argued.
In Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Centre for Education v. McInnis, 2025 NSCA 15, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and dismissed the respondent’s claim against the employer as the motion judge should have done.
The appeal court ruled that the judge thoroughly analyzed the jurisdictional question and made a well-reasoned conclusion that the respondent’s claim fell under a labour arbitrator’s exclusive jurisdiction.
However, the appeal court held that the judge made an error when he failed to dismiss the action as required by his prior conclusion and instead stayed the claim despite lacking any residual jurisdiction to do so.
The appeal court found that the judge, in effect, was attempting to retain jurisdiction over the action by staying it. The appeal court disagreed with the judge’s reliance on r. 94.06 of the Nova Scotia Civil Procedure Rules as a basis for granting the stay.
This provision was meant to cover proceedings where the appeal court or the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia had jurisdictional competency and was not intended to give a court jurisdiction where none existed, the appeal court explained.
