B.C. judge keeps wrongful-dismissal lawsuit by killer’s father in Vancouver

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has rejected an application to move a wrongful-dismissal lawsuit from Vancouver to Victoria, allowing Alan Schmegelsky’s case against his former employer to remain in Vancouver.

Schmegelsky, the father of Bryer Schmegelsky, filed the lawsuit in 2020 against Scansa Construction Ltd. He alleges he stepped away from his senior-carpenter job during the 2019 police search for his son and Kam McLeod, then was dismissed when he tried to return to work after the pair were found dead.

Scansa denies the allegations. In its response, the company says Schmegelsky did not ask to return to work during an Aug. 13, 2019 call and gave the impression that he was moving on. It says work remained available when it was contacted later that year by Service Canada and by Schmegelsky’s lawyer, and that it considered the employment relationship ended only after he launched the lawsuit.

The company sought to move the trial to Victoria, where it is based and where Schmegelsky had worked. Justice Lawrence Robinson declined, noting Schmegelsky’s concern that returning to the city could expose him to harm from people seeking retribution because of his son’s notoriety.

Bryer Schmegelsky and McLeod, then 18 and 19, were suspected of killing three people in northern B.C. in 2019. Their bodies were found in northern Manitoba on Aug. 7 of that year; authorities said they died by suicide. None of the allegations in the civil case has been proven in court. The trial is scheduled for January.