(October 5 – 12:10 ET) – The Vancouver Sun is reporting that Merrill Lynch & Co. Canada has been served with a wrongful dismissal suit from Vancouver-based financial commentator and mutual fund salesman Gordon Stenner, who was formerly with Merrill’s Abbotsford branch.
The newspaper reports that Stenner is seeking specified damages of $1.4 million from his pension plan, $400,000 of severance pay, and $67,000 of financial instruments held in trust by Merrill. He is also asking the court for aggravated and punitive damages. Statements of defence have not yet been filed and the allegations have not yet been proven in court.
Stenner claims that he was constructively dismissed by Merrill, which demanded that he stop his media activities and pass the Canadian Securities Course exam. He says he was lured away from Guardian Group of Funds in 1995 to the then-Midland Walwyn on the understanding that he could continue his media work. But, the suit says, Merrill wanted much of that activity to cease. He refused their demands, arguing that he was constructively dismissed by the firm changing his terms of employment.
This isn’t the first time Stenner has wound up in court over his employment situation. In 1996 he unsuccessfully sued the B.C. Securities Commission, the Attorney General of B.C. and a couple of officials over allegations that they unreasonably delayed his registration after his firm, Stenner Financial Services sunk in the October 1987 market crash. He subsequently joined Yorkton Securities.
-IE Staff