Alberta and AHS ordered to disclose records on whether fired CEO was warned about termination
Justice Michael Lema rejected the government's bid to pause records production in former AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos's $1.7-million wrongful termination lawsuit.
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A Court of King's Bench judge has ordered Alberta and Alberta Health Services to turn over records showing whether former AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos was warned about job performance before she was fired.
Justice Michael Lema issued the decision Wednesday on two issues in her $1.7-million wrongful termination lawsuit. The judge said AHS had a duty to warn Mentzelopoulos if she was failing to meet expectations. He wrote that neither the province nor AHS pointed to any circumstances that would undercut "the existence of a duty to warn here or, at minimum, a duty to raise performance concerns and provide an opportunity to address them."
The government said Mentzelopoulos was let go for poor performance on health care reforms. Lema wrote that the province's claim that she failed to "advance the health system refocus" is, despite the government's submissions, "a performance metric."
Mentzelopoulos says she was fired for investigating evidence of inflated contracts for private clinic surgeries, and for raising conflicts of interest around the province's 2022 importation of children's pain medication from Turkey. The defendants' statements of defence say she was dismissed for just cause. They also argue she was fired under the termination provisions of her employment contract. Lema noted that higher-ups had at one point praised her "phenomenal" performance.
The judge dismissed the government's request to pause records production until Nov. 16, which it wanted pending a Court of Appeal ruling on its appeal of an earlier Lema decision. Lema said neither party would be harmed if the records turned out not to be required, because they could be returned with "no prejudice or disadvantage." He also noted that the government waited three weeks after his earlier decision before seeking a stay.
In September, Lema ordered Mentzelopoulos to return dozens of confidential or privileged documents she kept after her firing. In early October, he ordered the province and AHS to disclose records they had claimed did not exist or sought to keep private, and he cited "gaps and deficiencies" in what they had provided. The new deadline for the records is Nov. 28. They include all records showing any warning of dismissal if performance concerns were not met, along with any performance assessments.
AHS spokesperson Kristi Bland declined to comment, citing the ongoing court case.
