Dear Colleagues;

While it is not a decision on the common law of employment (being an issue arising under discrimination legislation) the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in McCormick v. Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, 2014 SCC 39 http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/13663/index.do  is of general interest. The question was whether an equity partner in a law firm could claim to be in an “employment” relationship as defined in the relevant statute, when he was about to dismissed as such due to his age. The court applies the tests of “control” and “dependency” to conclude that he was not in such a relationship, but is explicit in saying that sometimes a partner in a firm might be treated as an employee of a firm in other circumstances- see [46], at least for the purposes of discrimination legislation. I was interested to see that Abella J referred at [37] to some specific Australian legislation in which the question has been dealt with on the assumption that partners would not be employees (and hence specific provisions have been inserted ensuring their protection in relation to particular discrimination grounds.)

Regards

Neil