He expected praise at breakfast and got a termination letter, but the real twist came later
A veteran financial advisor walked into a hotel expecting praise for his work. He walked out with a termination letter. Years later, a judge upheld the firing, but on a ground his former firm discovered only after he was already gone.
In reasons released June 23, 2026, Justice Morishita of the Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed a wrongful dismissal claim against Investors Group Financial Services Inc. The plaintiff, a financial advisor, had spent 27 years with the firm, building a book of roughly 500 clients and about $92.5 million in assets before being let go in May 2018.
A breakfast meeting that ended 27 years at the firm
On the morning of May 23, 2018, the advisor arrived at a Victoria hotel expecting good news about his work. Instead, an executive handed him an envelope ending his contract. The letter inside gave a single reason: "The basis for this termination is our assessment that you are unsuperviseable."
The firm's concerns had been building since 2016. Investors Group had flagged his failure to promptly disclose that an elderly, long-time client had named him a beneficiary in her will, a series of fund switches it viewed as generating commissions for him, and his handling of three action plans on the risk levels in his older clients' portfolios. Together, the company concluded he could no longer be supervised.
Justice Morishita was not persuaded that any of this, alone or combined, justified firing a long-serving worker without notice. The court found the failure to disclose the bequest and a related false certification amounted to misconduct of moderate severity, and that the trades and the action-plan work fell short of the serious wrongdoing needed to end the relationship outright. As of the day he was fired, the court found, the company did not have just cause.
The forms found after the firing
After the advisor left, Investors Group went through the files in his old office and found 24 pre-signed client forms covering 13 clients. That discovery opened the door to a doctrine known as after-acquired cause, which lets an employer rely on misconduct it learns about only after a dismissal, provided the conduct existed at the time and would have justified the firing.
Pre-signed forms are prohibited under both company policy and Mutual Fund Dealers Association rules. Under those guidelines, the court noted, "pre-signed forms are considered a form of signature falsification and constitute serious misconduct." The advisor had been signing monthly declarations during a period of close supervision confirming he kept none, and the court found at least one of those attestations was false.
Investors Group argued that if it could not rely on the advisor to follow critical industry rules while he was under close supervision and regulatory scrutiny, it could not rely on him at all. Justice Morishita agreed that collecting the forms while under close supervision and falsely attesting otherwise was serious enough to support the dismissal, even though the firm had not known about it when it acted.
The contract clauses and the counterclaim
Along the way, the court rejected the firm's contract defenses. Although the advisor's contract said he was not an employee but a principal and agent, Justice Morishita found the degree of control and integration made him a dependent contractor entitled to reasonable notice absent cause. The court also found the termination clause unenforceable, holding that a provision letting the firm end the relationship with no notice at all did not clearly set out any other notice period.
Investors Group had its own claim. It alleged the advisor breached the non-solicitation and confidentiality clauses by courting former clients and keeping roughly 840 client documents after he left, and it tied those breaches to about $1.33 million in lost revenue. The court found he had breached both clauses.
The counterclaim still failed. The court found Investors Group had not proven that the advisor's conduct, rather than client dissatisfaction or other factors, caused the departures, and dismissed it for lack of causation. With the advisor's own claim also dismissed, neither side recovered. The court found the pre-signed forms "demonstrated a level of deceit and dishonesty incompatible with the trust and integrity required of an investment advisor."
See Salina v Investors Group Financial Services Inc., 2026 BCSC 1168
