The CEO said executive quit. The judge read the texts and disagreed
A string of text messages was enough to fire a chemical company's chief operating officer without notice, an Alberta court has ruled. The decision rejected the employer's claim that the executive had quit, and left two related companies jointly liable for the payout.
Justice D.J. Reed of the Court of King's Bench of Alberta released the decision on June 5, 2026, granting summary judgment to Kevin O'Donoghue against his former employer, Fluid Energy Group Ltd., which later renamed itself Chemical Evolution Ltd. O'Donoghue, who joined the company at its 2011 founding and rose to chief operating officer, was awarded $291,000 for 18 months' notice under his employment contract, before deductions, along with a bonus, benefits, and matching retirement contributions.
The dispute traced to January 2023, days after Fluid Energy sold the core of its business and the deal closed on January 6. Three days later, O'Donoghue and chief executive Clay Purdy traded texts in which Purdy told him a package would be prepared and directed him to return company property.
One message, reproduced in the decision, read: "Legal will get your package done. Turn in your laptop, key cards, etc." Justice Reed found the exchange amounted to an actual or constructive dismissal without notice or cause, with no genuine issue requiring a trial.
Company said he resigned
Fluid Energy did not treat the exchange as a firing. It argued O'Donoghue had resigned, and that any termination came later, on January 18, 2023, through a formal letter citing just cause. The company accused him of relocating to the United States without authorization and of misrepresenting the sale of his Calgary home.
Justice Reed was not persuaded. A valid resignation, the decision noted, must be clear and unequivocal, and the judge found that O'Donoghue's statements did not meet that test. He had told Purdy he expected his employment agreement to be honoured, not that he was leaving.
The judge gave no weight to Purdy's later testimony that he believed O'Donoghue was resigning, calling it self-serving and speculative, and noted that no one at the company followed up to confirm any resignation. The company's own chief legal officer, Brandon Holden, had been instructed on January 9 to prepare a termination package.
Liability follows the assets
The case also reached beyond the former employer. The sale had moved the valuable assets to the buyer, leaving the former parent stripped of its core business, and O'Donoghue had sought to hold other companies in the corporate group responsible alongside it.
Justice Reed found that two of them, SixRing Inc. and SciencePak, were common employers and jointly and severally liable for the award, overturning the earlier ruling on that point. Purdy was chief executive of all the companies, which shared a single board and pooled payroll costs.
The court declined to award the punitive damages O'Donoghue had sought, finding no separate wrong beyond the dismissal. On the common employer question, Justice Reed wrote: "The very purpose of the common employer doctrine is for cases such as the present where the employee, cut adrift by its primary employer after a fundamentally altering transaction, is left to pursue what could be an empty, or shallow-pocketed shell."
