PREDICTING REASONABLE NOTICE IN CANADIAN WRONGFUL DISMISSAL CASES.

In Canada, an employee dismissed without just cause--defined to include layoffs for lack of work as well as dismissals without sufficient grounds--can sue the employer for a severance payment in lieu of "reasonable notice." Because the court determines reasonable notice according to the circumstances in each case, employers cannot easily calculate the correct amount of severance to give employees. The authors of this study identify the factors that significantly affected the length of notice awarded in more than 100 British Columbia cases in 1980-86 and develop a regression-based algorithm to estimate reasonable notice. They find that seven predictors account for 69 percent of the variance in reasonable notice awards. A test of the model with Canada-wide data shows it to be highly generalizable to other wrongful dismissal cases in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]