Alumni lead Canadian Lawyer’s top personal injury firms

Queen’s Law alumni hold leading positions in four of the five personal injury boutiques named tops in Canada by Canadian Lawyer magazine in April. The firms (alphabetically, below) were selected for providing superior client service and expertise.

Jim Howie, Law '78

Howie Sacks & Henry LLP

One major victory for founding partner Jim Howie, Law ‘78, resulted in a notable settlement and changes in tracking Ontario blood samples of newborn babies. He also represented a teenager so severely disabled in a car accident that he received $9 million in damages. Howie is a past president of the Toronto Lawyers Association (2002-03) and has been among the National Post’s “Best Canadian Lawyers” since the list’s inception.  

To Howie, law is a matter of “helping people deal with disasters that have come into their lives” – as taught him by such Queen’s professors as John Whyte, Law ‘68, Noel Lyon, Marvin Baer, Law ‘65, and special lecturer Alan D. Gold, Law ‘70. 

 

Jim Vigmond, Law '81

Oatley, Vigmond LLP

For Jim Vigmond, Law ‘81, and his co-founding partner Roger Oatley, the outstanding case concerned two men severely injured by a drunk driver. Of the combined $24-million settlement, the $12.5-million award to Vigmond’s client is the largest on record in Canada for a spinal cord injury. The partners are lead sponsors ($100,000 annually) of a peer support program for people with spinal cord injuries. 

Vigmond’s other honours include a 2009 LSS sessional teaching award for the Queen’s Personal Injury Advocacy course, being listed among the Best Lawyers in Canada since 2008, and fellowship in the Litigation Council of America. 

Among the “great professors” who inspired and motivated him, he singles out David Mullan, LLM ‘73, as “very influential in channeling my efforts into the litigation track."

Alf Kwinter

Singer, Kwinter Personal Injury Lawyers 

Founding partner Alf Kwinter, a late ‘70s alumnus, points proudly to cases Plester vs. Wawanesa and Pereira vs. Hamilton Township, in which he won record judgments against fire insurers that had refused payouts, blaming arson. In another Kwinter case, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that even if a person dies while committing a crime, the life insurance beneficiary can still collect. “The most wonderful thing in the world,” he laughs, “is going to the Supreme Court. You wish your parents and all your doubting high school teachers could be there.”

Kwinter’s one year at Queen’s Law made an enormous impact. “The best professor I ever had is now Governor General Dave Johnston, Law ‘66 (LLD ‘91), who taught me property law. Queen’s was a terrific atmosphere, great for learning.” 

L. Craig Brown, Law '78

Thomson Rogers

  L. Craig Brown, Law ‘78 (Artsci ‘75), is one of three alumni partners at Thomson Rogers who lead a distinguished personal injury practice (the others being David Payne, Law ‘82, and Wendy Moore Johns, Law ‘93). Brown and Thomson Rogers were lead negotiators for a 20-firm consortium handling the largest class action settlement in Canadian history: the “socially and politically significant” $5-billion deal for Aboriginal victims of the residential schools, “compensating them for not just the racist education many received, but the sexual abuse,” he says. Brown also has won precedent-setting judgments at trial for a woman mauled by a tiger at Ontario’s African Lion Safari and for a boy catastrophically injured when the front wheel of his bicycle collapsed. 

Describing his student involvement with the rural Legal Aid program as “a tremendous experience,” Brown adds, “My law education at Queen’s was the finest I could have received in Canada. The five other Queen’s graduates at our firm feel the same way.”

 

For more on the top five personal injury firms, read “A Cut Above” by Robert Todd, April 2011 issue of Canadian Lawyer, at http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/a-cut-above.html

-- Georgie Binks