Case Of Tim Hortons Employee Fired Over Toonie In 1999 Delayed At Ont. Court Of Appeal

Did she steal money or was she taking what was rightfully hers? That’s one of the questions that will be dealt with at the Ontario Court of Appeal, as a woman claims she was a victim of a wrongful dismissal and a bad decision by the Crown. But we may not know much until Friday.

The case has been put off for a few more days.

Charlene Walsh was seven months pregnant and working at a Toronto Tim Hortons outlet in June 1999. She was fired after management accused her of taking money from the till. The amount of her alleged haul: a toonie.

It wasn’t the size of the theft but company principle that led the franchise owner to call police and she was charged with theft under $5,000. Walsh insisted she wasn’t guilty, noting the cash register is where she kept her tips, that the $2 coin had been given to her as a gratuity by a customer and that she was only taking what was rightfully hers.

The Crown later withdrew the charge, but Walsh was furious that the allegation had been made in the first place and sued both Toronto Police and the franchise owner, as the case that had centered over two bucks snowballed into an expensive legal proceeding.

A jury dismissed her complaint but that didn’t satisfy the angry ex-employee. She’s now taken her hunt for justice to the next level, arriving at the Court of Appeal Wednesday and asking them to reinstate her original suit.

In a case already filled with extremes, her attorney, Ernest Guiste, is asking for $23.75 million in damages, a figure he readily admits is excessive but one he says is being used to show how serious his client takes what happened to her.

Guiste also alleges Toronto Police were in a conflict of interest, since the arresting officer admitted receiving free coffee from the Tim Hortons outlet in question, a factor he argues may have tainted the decision to file the charge.

But it was Guiste himself who asked for the delay, as the already bizarre case became even stranger.

The lawyer requested an adjournment because a videotape he needed for evidence wasn’t available. Then he realized one of the three judges had presided over the previous dismissed case.

 

That led to accusations he was biased against Guiste, who is black. An insulted Justice Michael Moldaver angrily denied the charge then recused himself to remove any hint of impropriety.

 

After that, Guiste claimed his nerves were so rattled, he wasn’t able to proceed and the case was put off until Friday.

Walsh has suffered a number of serious reverses in her life in the nine years since her fateful last day at work. She’s now on disability and needs an operation to have a non-life threatening brain tumour removed.

Lawyer David Shiller, who represents the franchise owner of the Tim Hortons outlet named in the suit, says he’s disappointed the case has been delayed again, even if it’s only for two more days. He calls the allegations ‘frivolous’ and suggests it should be a matter for small claims court.

It’s the kind of publicity Tim Hortons would likely rather see just go away. The company was in the spotlight last week, after a London woman was fired for giving a child a single Timbit worth 16 cents.

The franchise has strict rules about giving away product but admits the owner of the store may have overreacted. The woman in that case has since been given a new position at another outlet in the city.

With files from The Canadian Press