CIBCunpaidovertime.ca

In June 2007, SGM and Roy Elliott O'Connor LLP filed class action suit against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for unpaid overtime. The lawsuit is the largest unpaid overtime class action ever launched in Canada.

The action covers thousands of current and former non-management, non-unionized employees of CIBC in Canada who are or were tellers or other front-line customer service employees (limited to personal bankers, commercial bankers and account executives) working at CIBC retail branch offices across Canada.

The representative of the class action is Dara Fresco, a CIBC teller who has worked in more than a dozen CIBC branches across Toronto for nearly 10 years. Based on her own experience, she claims the unpaid overtime situation is widespread at CIBC among non management employees.

The statement of claim alleges that class members are assigned heavier workloads than can be completed within their standard working hours. They are required or permitted to work overtime to meet the demands of their jobs and CIBC fails to pay for the overtime work in direct contravention of the Canada Labour Code under which they are regulated.

In order to facilitate affected CIBC employees across Canada joining this class action, SGM and REO are working with Camp Fiorante Matthews in British Columbia, Chivers Carpenter Lawyers in Alberta, Kapoor Selnes in Saskatchewan, Myers Weinberg LLP in Manitoba, Melançon, Marceau, Grenier et Sciortino in Quebec and Pink Breen Larkin in Atlantic Canada. Employees will have access to local counsel to determine whether they qualify to be a member of the class.

Details of the CIBC class action are available at www.unpaidovertime.ca

For more information about the CIBC class action, call 1-888-687-2431 or contact Louis Sokolov.

For more information about class actions generally, click here.

Progress of the case

On June 18, 2009, Justice Lax of the Ontario Superior Court denied SGM's motion to certify Dara Fresco’s class action.

The Court was not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence of systemic wrongdoing and was further of the opinion that the claims of the class members were not sufficiently common to permit the case to proceed as a class action. In particular, the court rejected the argument that the issue of the legality of the CIBC overtime policy was common to all class members and the resolution of the issue would substantially advance the litigation. The court found that the remaining criteria for certification had been met.

On September 10, 2010, a majority of a panel of the Divisional Court upheld the decision of Justice Lax regarding certification. A third judge dissented, stating that she would have certified the action.

On January 21, 2011, the Ontario Court of Appeal granted Dara Fresco's application for leave to appeal.

Update: The appeal was scheduled to be heard on September 14 and 15, 2011. However, halfway through the first day of hearing, the Court advised that it could no longer continue due to a medical issue and the appeal was adjourned. The appeal was heard on November 30 and December 1 and 2, 2011, at the same time as the appeal in the Scotiabank unpaid overtime class action. The panel hearing the appeal (Winkler C.J.O., Lang and Watt JJ.A.) reserved its decision.