A 59-year-old IBM executive was awarded $682,151.18 in wrongful dismissal damages – but it's the novel approach to valuing cancelled equity that employers and employees alike should be watching.
The answer the court landed on — tying equity valuation to an individual employee's documented investment behaviour — may be the most consequential aspect of a decision that otherwise follows well-established case law. This is the part of the case in Adelman v. IBM Canada Limited, 2026 ONSC 420 (CanLII)
Mr. Adelman disagreed. He sued for 24 months' notice, bonus entitlements, and damages for cancelled restricted stock units (RSUs) and stock options that would have vested during what would have been his notice period.
IBM's position was conventional: value the shares on the date they would have vested. Simple, predictable, administratively tidy. Mr. Adelman's lawyers argued for something different. Mr. Adelman testified that his investing philosophy was what he called “passive” – when equity vested, he tended to leave it alone until he needed the money. His shares from the February 2023 vesting had been held an average of 402 days before sale. He said he would likely have done the same with the February 2024 shares., 2019 ONCA 991 (CanLII), the court held that damages should be assessed on the basis of what would “probably have happened” – and that an employee's own prior conduct with identical awards was the best available evidence of that probability. The implied sale dates were set 402 days after each vesting date, and IBM shares had appreciated meaningfully by then. The result: $269,508.27 in equity damages, compared to a figure that would have been materially lower on IBM's preferred vesting-date approach.