Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Characterization of Craig Warren’s claim as a wrongful dismissal action arising from the termination of his employment in September 2019.
• Effect of the plaintiff’s January 20, 2025 and September 11, 2025 offers to settle, and whether they triggered substantial indemnity costs under Rule 49 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.
• Treatment of a significant “stub period” bonus payment made on March 6, 2025, including whether and how it should reduce damages and affect comparison with earlier settlement offers.
• Scope of the court’s discretion under Rules 49.10 and 49.13 to award substantial indemnity costs, and the requirement for “reprehensible conduct” before elevating costs above the partial indemnity scale.
• Application of sections 128 and 130 of the Courts of Justice Act to pre-judgment interest, including whether fluctuating interest rates and alleged litigation “misconduct” justify a rate above the prescribed 2% set in 2019.
• Assessment of the sufficiency of evidence regarding “market interest rates” and prejudice claimed by the plaintiff as an experienced investment banker allegedly deprived of funds for several years.

Facts of the case

Craig Warren was employed by Canaccord Genuity Corp. in a senior role as an investment banker. His employment was terminated by Canaccord in September 2019, leading him to commence an action in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice alleging wrongful dismissal. The core of his claim was that the termination was without just cause and that Canaccord had failed to provide him with appropriate notice, compensation, and related entitlements on termination.
In addition to salary-related damages, a key component of the dispute concerned Warren’s entitlement to a “stub period” bonus for the portion of the fiscal year 2020 that he had already worked before his employment ended on September 6, 2019. This bonus was not paid at the time of termination, despite being tied to work already performed. The delay in paying this amount ultimately became significant both for the quantum of damages and for the calculation of pre-judgment interest.
The dispute proceeded through pleadings, discovery, refusals motions and trial preparation. Warren made efforts to resolve the matter at several stages. Before litigation formally began, in November 2019, he made a settlement proposal seeking $2,050,000 to resolve his claims. Later, as the case approached trial, he served formal offers to settle under Rule 49 of the Rules of Civil Procedure. Canaccord, for its part, maintained a firm litigation stance, disputing both liability and quantum and making a much lower counter-offer of $300,000 subject to withholdings shortly before the first trial date.

The trial judgment on wrongful dismissal

The main trial judgment (released on January 28, 2026) found in favour of Warren on his wrongful dismissal claim. The court concluded that he had been wrongfully dismissed and was entitled to substantial damages reflecting reasonable notice (or pay in lieu), bonuses and other compensation he would have earned during the notice period, including the previously unpaid stub-period bonus.
In total, the trial judge awarded Warren damages of $2,540,073.95. This figure already took into account a significant payment that Canaccord made on March 6, 2025, immediately before the first trial date. That payment was described in an Agreed Statement of Facts as a pro-rated bonus for the weeks Warren worked at Canaccord in fiscal year 2020 prior to his termination, in the gross amount of $221,427.70 (netting $101,149.39 after deductions). The court treated this payment as reducing—but not eliminating—Warren’s claim for the stub-period bonus and related compensation, and it therefore deducted the gross amount from what would otherwise have been the damages total.
The trial reasons resolved liability and damages but expressly left two issues outstanding: (1) the calculation of pre- and post-judgment interest, and (2) the allocation of costs of the proceeding. Counsel were invited to attempt to agree on those matters and, failing agreement, to make written submissions. They were unable to resolve them, resulting in the subsequently released endorsement on costs and pre-judgment interest.

Settlement offers and their impact on costs

A pivotal issue in the costs decision was the effect of Warren’s formal offers to settle under Rule 49. The first offer, delivered January 20, 2025, proposed that Canaccord pay Warren $2,700,000 (less statutory withholdings and including all Employment Standards Act entitlements), together with his costs on a partial indemnity basis and pre-judgment interest at the prescribed rate under the Courts of Justice Act.
The damages actually awarded at trial were slightly less than $2.7 million. One reason was that the court deducted the March 6, 2025 bonus payment from what otherwise would have been the total damages; if the gross amount of that payment ($221,427.70) had been added back, the award would have been $2,761,501.65, which would have exceeded the $2.7 million offer. However, because the payment was in fact made and properly reduced the damages claim, the actual result Warren obtained ($2,540,073.95) did not meet or surpass the January 20, 2025 offer when the figures were compared as they stood at the time of judgment.
To address the changing situation after the March 2025 payment, Warren served an Amended Offer on September 11, 2025, only four days before the commencement of trial. That Amended Offer maintained the $2,700,000 settlement amount but explicitly provided that it would be reduced by the gross amount of the March 2025 payment, once Canaccord provided evidence of the gross figure and corresponding deductions. Effectively, this reduced the settlement proposal to $2,478,572.30 after accounting for the March payment.
The court rejected Canaccord’s argument that the two offers were unclear or insufficiently “crystal clear.” It held that the original January 20 offer was clear and straightforward, and the Amended Offer clearly explained that the gross March payment was to be deducted from the $2.7 million figure. The real difficulty for Warren, however, was timing and the strict language of Rule 49.10. While Warren’s trial award exceeded the reduced Amended Offer, that Amended Offer was served only four days before trial—less than the seven days required by Rule 49.10 for the mandatory costs consequences to apply.
As a result, the court concluded that Warren was not “entitled” as of right to substantial indemnity costs under Rule 49.10 on the basis of either offer. He had not achieved a more favourable result than his January 20, 2025 offer (given the intervening payment), and although he beat the Amended Offer, that offer was made too late to engage the rule’s automatic cost consequences.

The court’s discretion under Rule 49.13 and the standard for elevated costs

Despite the technical non-compliance with Rule 49.10, the court considered its broader discretion under Rule 49.13. That rule allows a judge, “despite” Rules 49.03, 49.10, and 49.11, to take into account any written offer to settle, its timing, and its terms when exercising the general discretion over costs. The Ontario Court of Appeal has interpreted this as giving judges “residuary discretion” to consider offers that do not strictly comply with the formal requirements and to adopt a holistic approach to settlement behaviour.
In this case, Warren had made multiple reasonable settlement efforts: his pre-action November 2019 offer of $2,050,000; his formal January 20, 2025 Rule 49 offer; and the clarifying Amended Offer in September 2025. These stood in stark contrast to Canaccord’s much lower $300,000 offer made in March 2025. On a purely discretionary level, this pattern of offers strongly favoured Warren’s position on costs.
However, longstanding Court of Appeal authority—particularly McBride Metal Fabricating Corp. v. H & W Sales Company Inc. and Mortimer v. Cameron—holds that substantial indemnity costs require “special circumstances,” most typically some form of reprehensible conduct by the unsuccessful party. The judge accepted that he was bound by this line of authority, notwithstanding the more flexible tone of later decisions like Lawson v. Viersen. As a result, even though Rule 49.13 allowed him to consider Warren’s offers in a broad, fairness-based way, it did not permit him to award substantial indemnity costs absent conduct meeting the high threshold of “reprehensible.”
Warren alleged that Canaccord had engaged in “hard ball” tactics: refusing reasonable settlement proposals, forcing a refusals motion, providing undertakings late, producing documents belatedly and allegedly failing to produce relevant documents at all. Canaccord disputed much of this characterization. The court ultimately held that, even if some of the conduct was unwelcome or aggressive, it did not rise to the level of reprehensible conduct required to justify substantial indemnity costs. Defendants are entitled to defend a case fully and take legitimate positions on liability and damages, even if that makes the litigation more arduous for the plaintiff.

Costs award and the scale of costs

Given these constraints, the court awarded Warren his costs on a partial indemnity basis rather than on a substantial indemnity scale. Importantly, the amount of partial indemnity costs claimed—$798,453.91—was not challenged by Canaccord in terms of quantum. The dispute was about scale, not about the arithmetical reasonableness of the bill itself.
After reviewing the parties’ submissions and the governing case law, the judge ordered that Canaccord pay costs of the action to Warren in the amount of $798,453.91 on a partial indemnity basis. This order reflected Warren’s clear success at trial and his reasonable settlement posture, while also adhering to the appellate requirement that substantial indemnity costs be reserved for truly exceptional or reprehensible conduct.

Pre-judgment interest and the prescribed rate

The second major issue was pre-judgment interest. Under section 128 of the Courts of Justice Act, a successful litigant is presumptively entitled to interest on the amount awarded from the date the cause of action arose (here, Warren’s termination in September 2019) to the date of judgment, at the pre-judgment interest rate prescribed under section 127(2). In 2019, that prescribed rate was 2.0%. Applied to Warren’s damages award, the prescribed rate produced a total interest figure of $349,492.58, which included $24,363.11 in interest on the stub-period bonus.
Warren argued that the court should depart from the prescribed rate and apply a higher, “average” rate reflecting what he characterized as market interest rate fluctuations over the nearly seven-year period between termination and judgment. He asserted that market rates had ranged between 0.5% and 5.3%, and sought a blended rate of 2.67% for the main damages and 2.62% for the stub bonus, which would have yielded pre-judgment interest of approximately $465,963.52 in total. He also argued that, as an experienced investment banker, he had the expertise to generate higher returns on his capital, and that being deprived of such a large sum for many years caused particular financial prejudice.
The court rejected these submissions. Relying in part on the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Henry v. Zaitlen, it emphasized that there is a strong presumption in favour of the prescribed pre-judgment interest rate. The burden lies on the party seeking a different rate to prove that “unusual or special circumstances” justify a departure, having regard to the statutory factors in section 130(2) of the Courts of Justice Act and all other relevant considerations. Interest awards are compensatory, not punitive; they are not meant to punish a defendant for litigating or to reward a plaintiff with an investment-style return.
On the evidence, Warren had not established the sort of market-rate proof required to rely on the “changes in market interest rates” factor in section 130(2)(a). The ranges he cited were in fact drawn from the prescribed court rates themselves, not independent market data, and the Court of Appeal has cautioned that those prescribed rates are not to be equated with genuine “market” rates. Even if one looked at the prescribed rates historically, the court found that the variation—from 0.5% in 2020–2022, up to 5.3% in late 2023 and much of 2024, and then back down to 2.5%—did not amount to such a marked or sustained change as to justify departing from the original 2% rate fixed at the time of termination.
The court also declined to treat the six-plus years between termination and judgment as the kind of “lengthy period of time” that had triggered interest-rate adjustments in earlier cases, which typically involved litigation lasting a decade or more and supported by detailed evidence of substantial interest-rate shifts. Nor did the court accept Warren’s assertion that he personally would have generated higher returns had he had the money earlier; no concrete evidence of what he would have done, or what returns he would likely have achieved, was provided. The judge regarded such claims as speculative and inherently suspect, echoing the approach taken in Henry v. Zaitlen, where even detailed stock-market performance tables did not suffice to displace the prescribed rate.
In the result, the court accepted Canaccord’s position on the calculation of pre-judgment interest at the prescribed rate. It ordered pre-judgment interest on the damages award of $325,129.47, plus $24,363.11 in interest on the stub-period bonus, for a total pre-judgment interest component of $349,492.58.

Overall outcome and total monetary result

Taken together, the trial judgment and the subsequent costs and interest decision produced a very substantial financial recovery for Craig Warren. On the merits, he succeeded on his wrongful dismissal claim and was awarded damages of $2,540,073.95. On the post-judgment issues, he obtained an order that Canaccord pay his costs of the action on a partial indemnity basis in the amount of $798,453.91, and pre-judgment interest at the prescribed Courts of Justice Act rate totaling $349,492.58 (including interest on the stub-period bonus). While Warren did not succeed in obtaining substantial indemnity costs or an elevated interest rate, he remained the clearly successful party overall. In aggregate, the court’s orders directed Canaccord Genuity Corp. to pay Craig Warren approximately $3,688,020.44 in damages, pre-judgment interest, and costs (before any applicable statutory withholdings and deductions), reflecting a decisive outcome in his favour.