Bell Canada Pension Class Action Lawsuit Revived by Court of Appeal

The Court of Appeal for Ontario overturned the dismissal of a class action lawsuit challenging the calculation of Bell Canada’s pension plan’s cost of living adjustment.

In 2017, Bell Canada allegedly miscalculated the cost of living increase for all of its pensioners, negatively affecting the calculation of their payments under the plan. Because each year’s calculation is based on an increase from the previous year, this discrepancy will reverberate through time, according to the Bell Canada class action lawsuit.

The Bell Canada class action lawsuit was brought on behalf of about 35,000 retired Bell employees. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice initially certified the Bell Canada class action, but later dismissed the plaintiff’s claims.

According to plaintiff Leslie Austin, the pension plan requires Bell to follow Statistics Canada’s policy and round only to one decimal point, or 1.5 percent, to determine the pension index. Another provision in the pension plan reportedly requires Bell to round the pension index to the nearest whole number.

Austin argues that Bell improperly handled the rounding of its pension index increase of 1.49 percent in 2017. They say the amount should be rounded up to 2 percent while Bell says it should have been rounded down to 1 percent.

“The difference to the class members between a 2% and a 1% increase in the 2017 pension is over $10 million for the first year and, over the long-term, over $100 million,” the appeals court wrote.

The parties in the Bell Canada class action lawsuit disagreed about whether Statistics Canada’s pension index calculation should be read into the entire pension contract or if it could only be applied to specific provisions. There was also some concern about the placement of a comma within the policy, which led the lower court to determine that the 1.5 percent Statistics Canada calculation did not apply throughout the entire document. Therefore, the lower judge concluded, Bell was justified in using its two-decimal point rounding to calculate the pension index.

The appeals court found that the policy was not ambiguous and determined the lower court erred when failed to consider the contra proferentem rule. The appeals court noted that any ambiguity in the plan should be decided in favor of the pensioners.

“Accordingly, we allow the appeal, set aside the summary judgment dismissing the action and in its place award summary judgment in favour of the appellant,” the appeals court wrote in its order.

The Bell Canada pension class action lawsuit seeks $150 million in damages.

Do you think the court of appeal was right to overturn the lower court’s ruling? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below. 

Austin is represented by Mark Zigler, Jonathan Ptak and Garth Myers.

The Bell Canada Pension Class Action Lawsuit is Leslie Austin v. Bell Canada, et al., Case No. C67404, in the Court of Appeal for Ontario, Canada.

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