Arena managers’ wrongful dismissal trial in judge’s hands

Men fired from senior positions after trip that included golf and NFL game

A Saskatchewan justice does not know how long it will take him to issue a decision on whether the firing of two long-term senior managers at Saskatoon’s Credit Union Centre (CUC) was inappropriate.

Closing arguments in the wrongful dismissal trial of Brian Swidrovich, the CUC’s former director of business development and sponsorship, and Will Antonishyn, the CUC’s former director of ticketing and finance, wrapped up Friday in Saskatoon’s Court of Queen’s Bench.

Justice Richard Elson told those gathered that he hopes to write a decision as “quickly as (he) can,” but that Saskatchewan courts are facing “a perfect storm,” in part because of judge vacancies that have not been filled, and so there could be yet another delay in a case that took more than five years to get to trial.

Swidrovich and Antonishyn were fired in January 2012 after the CUC’s board determined they inappropriately spent more than $7,000 on a trip to Arizona in October 2011 that involved golfing and attending a National Football League game with a vice-president of the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority (SIGA).

The CUC — since renamed SaskTel Centre — argues there was no legitimate business reason for the trip, while the terminated employees say there was no just cause to fire them because the trip was work related and had been approved by the organization’s outgoing executive director, Ken Wood, who had approved similar trips in 2009 and 2010.

On Friday, CUC lawyer Robert Gibbings said Swidrovich and Antonishyn presented “numerous inconsistencies” when justifying their trip. They had said the main objective was to strengthen CUC’s relationship with SIGA, but the SIGA vice-president on the trip was on vacation, not representing SIGA and had no control over marketing decisions made by the casinos he managed.

Swidrovich and Antonishyn said another objective of the trip was to observe the Phoenix stadium because CUC managers were considering building a Canadian Football League stadium in Saskatoon.

Gibbings said the fact the men did not take a formal tour and drank beer before going to a game in the stadium suggested they were not treating the outing as part of a legitimate business trip.

Elson questioned whether those details were relevant.

“At the end of the day, the question still becomes that these two plaintiffs were authorized by their immediate superior to take the trip,” he said.

Gibbings said Swidrovich and Antonishyn were senior enough employees to have known the trip was a “reckless” use of CUC funds and said they are relying on the “soldiers’ defence,” saying it was OK to do what they did because they were told to.