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A high-profile Vancouver law firm must pay a former articling student nearly $70,000 for her “unnecessary and psychologically brutal,” deliberate public firing after only four months, rendering her temporarily homeless.

In a scathing rebuke of Acumen Law Corp. and lawyer Paul Doroshenko, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Gomery said the consequences of wrongfully terminating Melissa Ojanen’s employment in a dispute over marketing materials and involvement with a competing blog were severe.

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“She is the victim of unfair, bullying, bad faith conduct by her former employer and her former principal and has suffered substantial and prolonged emotional distress because of that conduct,” Justice Gomery writes in his decision.

“Since her termination, she has mostly been unemployed. She could not afford her rent and lived out of a car for three months. The car belonged to (her estranged husband Nicholas) Dominato and he repossessed it and moved back to Ontario. Ms. Ojanen lived on the street for a week or so after that before she was able to persuade her parents to take her in; she now lives in an apartment they own.”