Law Times

Follow McKELLAR STRUCTURED SETTLEMENTS INC. www.mckellar.com 1-800-265-8381 www.mckellar.com ckellar_LT_Jan14_08.indd 1 $3.55 • Vol. 20, No. 20 1/8/08 3:03:02 PM Inside This Issue 3 Dress For Success Covering Ontario's Legal Scene on www.twitter.com/lawtimes June 15, 2009 Ex-partner must pay Aird & Berlis $500,000 in costs 7 White-Shoe Lawyers claiming the fi rm should have paid him a bigger bonus before his departure. Th e parties in Springer v. Aird & Berlis Firm wins bonus battle A BY ROBERT TODD Law Times ird & Berlis LLP has been awarded nearly $500,000 in costs from a former partner who lost a lawsuit 9 Focus On Real Estate Law Quote of the week "I don't know how far afi eld it is, and the fact that we're even thinking of whether Crown lawyers took part is disturbing." — Norman Boxall, Criminal Lawyers' Association vice president See Lawyers, page 4 LLP agreed before the trial that the quan- tum of damages in the matter was just un- der $586,000, although the plaintiff 's state- ment of claim sought $1 million. Superior Court Justice Frank Newbould granted costs on a substantial indemnity basis after Jan. 25, 2009, when the law fi rm off ered to settle the matter for $100,000. It off ered $150,000 the following month. "We're really pleased with the result. We think it's a further vindication of our client's position throughout the trial," says Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP managing partner Linda Rothstein, who represented Aird & Berlis. "Our client made an off er to settle because every sophisticated client knows that this kind of litigation is very expensive, as was borne out by the costs award." Harold Springer and his lawyer, Th omas Dunne of Gowling Lafl eur Henderson LLP, did not respond to requests for comment. Springer, a former partner at Aird & Berlis, alleged that he deserved a larger share of partner- ship units for 2001 and 2002 and that he should have gotten more money from a withdrawal pay- ment. Newbould dismissed the action in April. Aird & Berlis had sought about $524,000 on Roland lawyers Robert Centa, a partner at the fi rm, and associate Jean-Claude Killey, who be- gan working on the case as a student. Newbould took odds with Springer's failure to submit information regarding time spent by his own lawyers on the case, while opposing submissions from the defence. "It is diffi cult to be able to be sanguine re- garding the correct number of hours to be in- cluded in any award of costs, particularly when the plaintiff has not produced any information about the hours spent by his solicitors," the judge wrote. "A judge does not have the luxury of knowing what all was required and the dif- fi culties faced by counsel in preparing a case for trial and attending at the trial. Th is comment is relevant to all of the deductions which the plaintiff asserts should be made to the number of hours spent on behalf of the defendant." Newbould also said, "[I]t must be recog- nized that the attack in this case was on a group of professionals with whom the plaintiff had worked for some years and by whom the plain- tiff had been handsomely rewarded." Th e judge added, "Mr. Springer had to re- Linda Rothstein represented Aird & Berlis LLP, which was awarded $500,000 in costs from a for- mer partner who wanted a bigger bonus. a partial indemnity scale until the settlement of- fer, while Springer suggested the proper amount would be about $262,000. Th e plaintiff did not oppose the disbursements of about $47,000. Springer questioned the amount of time spent on the case by Aird & Berlis' counsel on the case, including Rothstein and fellow Paliare alize that the defendant would take steps to strongly oppose the claim and that it would take considerable work to do so." Springer proposed substantial indemnity rates of $360 per hour for Rothstein, who was called to the bar in 1982, and $237 for Centa, who was called in 2001. Th e judge disagreed. "In my view these rates would be wholly in- adequate substantial indemnity rates for litiga- tion in downtown Toronto conducted between See Springer, page 2 Legal aid boycott gathering steam BY ROBERT TODD Law Times C riminal defence lawyers' le- gal aid boycott built steam last week as a growing list of Toronto-area practitioners jumped aboard and the Criminal Lawyers' Association landed a meeting with Attorney General Chris Bentley. CLA president Frank Addario says the association and government have agreed not to discuss the tim- ing or subject matter of their talks. Addario suggested Bentley is sympa- thetic to the lawyers' struggle. "We see him as a person of good faith on this issue," says Addario. "We see him as a person who wants to make changes to the program, because he understands that years of cuts and freezes have led to it being discredited in the legal community." Th e number of lawyers adding their support jumped to over 340 last week, including the addition of lawyers with a minimum of fi ve years of experience. Addario says the CLA previously hoped to shield such lawyers from the "inevitable impact" of boycotting guns-and-gangs and murder cases through the campaign, but many insisted upon getting involved. "I'm obviously pleased by the show of consensus in the bar that the program is badly in need of a fi x," he says. "And that the im- balance is obvious to anyone who practises criminal law." Addario says the boycott has succeeded in communicating to other lawyers and the public that the "program is broken and needs fi xing," and that it does not provide access to justice as intended. Meanwhile, Th e Advocates' So- ciety added its voice to the chorus of calls for more legal aid funding. Th e society, which rarely goes pub- lic in this way with its views, issued a statement from president Peter Cronyn indicating its "continuing concern" regarding the system. "Ontarians have had the good fortune to live in the fi rst prov- ince to establish an organized legal aid program," said Cronyn. "However, numerous studies have confi rmed the system that exists today is in dire need of additional funding to allow it to function adequately and to truly serve the interests of those citizens who are most vulnerable amongst us." Marie Henein, vice president of Th e Advocates' Society, tells Law Times that the lack of legal aid funding has led to "longer trials, unfocused trials, miscarriages of jus- tice. But on a practical level, what is happening is that senior, qualifi ed counsel are being eff ectively driven out of representing individuals who really need their assistance." Criminal defence lawyer Pe- ter Zaduk, a member of the CLA executive participating in the boy- cott, recently won the high-profi le lesbian axe-murder case. He says such cases are too draining and not lucrative enough to off set the "pro- fessional challenge" they present. "It's immensely rewarding in ev- ery way but fi nancial," says Zaduk. "It's a great thing to win a case like See Advocates', page 2 Value your time? Then you'll value our technology! Tel: 416.322.6111 Toll-free: 1.866.367.7648 www.doprocess.com Industry leader in legal software for real estate, corporate and estates for over a decade www.lawtimesnews.com

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• Dress For Success
• White-Shoe Lawyers
• Focus On Real Estate Law