Illustration: Jeremy Bruneel

Insurance companies are most welcome parties in almost any lawsuit. But it’s not always easy to get them to the table. That’s why two recent court rulings on insurance companies’ duty to defend in lawsuits over property damage are good news both for construction companies and for those who want to sue them. “It brings another player to the litigation,” says André Legrand, a partner in the Montreal office of Norton Rose OR LLP, referring to a Quebec Superior Court judgment that compels Intact Insurance Co. to defend a company that supplied bricks for an allegedly defective construction project. “You have another party here with financial exposure at the very least in terms of defence costs.”

Illustration: Sara Tyson

When Pascale Daigneault married her law partner Carl Fleck 20 years ago, the couple left its two-lawyer southwestern Ontario personal injury practice to go off on a honeymoon. It didn’t occur to them at the time that this would be their last real holiday for many years. “It can be quite time consuming to look after your practice,” says Daigneault of Fleck & Daigneault in Point Edward, Ont. She makes it clear that this is something of an understatement by pointing out that you can easily find yourself going into your office six or seven days a week.

Illustration: Matt Daley

It’s an uncomfortable fact of life that anyone buying into a new condominium development must sign a contract and put down a deposit, sight unseen, years before they can move into a completed building. That’s because pre-sales are routinely required by banks and other lenders that don’t want to advance funds without the security of knowing units will be sold. But the uncertainties involved in this practice are a frequent source of frustration for purchasers and developers alike all over Canada, often leading to disputes and lawsuits.

Landlords may end up with unwanted tenants and unpaid rent as a result of recent changes to Canada’s bankruptcy and insolvency laws.

 

The bank drafts looked good, but the grammar in the other lawyer’s e-mail was bad. That’s what made James Morgan suspect he was being targeted for a scam — an attempt to get money out of the small-town Ontario lawyer’s trust account on the strength of forged cheques and a phoney loan to one of his clients.

 

While B.C. condos go green, environmentally conscious developers and lawyers in Ontario are going green with envy, as consumer-protection provisions in the province’s condominium law deter large investments in energy-efficient projects. “It makes me sad to see that’s something we’re missing out on,” says Harry Herskowitz, senior real estate counsel at DelZotto Zorzi LLP in Toronto, whose clients include Tridel Corp., one of Canada’s leading condo developers. 

 

Collecting taxes from clients is certainly not part of a law firm’s core business. It’s a task lawyers are usually content to leave to support staff and accountants. That’s why many lawyers have paid little attention to any of the details involved in the move to harmonized sales tax (HST) in Ontario and British Columbia. And it’s the reason why some law firms and sole practitioners are in for a few nasty surprises, according to tax experts in both provinces.

 

Barbara Boake well understands how difficult it is to predict what will happen in the complex negotiations or adversarial processes in which lawyers are routinely engaged. But the Toronto-based partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP also knows that more predictability — a better understanding of potential outcomes and fees — is exactly what clients are looking for, especially in an economy where budgets are constrained and all costs are scrutinized.

Condominiums are hot again and so are condo laws. In spite of a recession that took most of the air out of real estate bubbles, the frantic pace of condo development is picking up again in major Canadian cities.

 

Now that several U.S. law firms have run away from the lockstep model for associate compensation, many Canadian firms are looking to move in the same direction, though not at the same pace.