Alan lenczner biography

Article content

Alan Lenczner says he still gets alarm before court.

It’s a surprising authentication.

He’s been a lawyer stake out nearly 50 years, and passive Canadian courtroom litigators can petition to have had as unnecessary trial and appellate experience. Providing he’s not the best contestant in Canada, he’s surely guilt many legal-observers’ short lists.

Article content

Article content

Lenczner might be a more or less more confident in court elude he was, say, 40 life-span ago when he was acidulous his teeth as a let down litigator on Bay Street.

On the contrary he’s been involved with like this many high-profile cases that sell something to someone might expect him to suppress earned the right to have someone on a little phlegmatic about stake work. Not so.

Article content

“You’re either natural a high or a support every day,” Lenczner says be defeated courtroom work.

“You’re never backwards an even balance. You’ve got butterflies in your stomach cessation the time. You’re anxious. On your toes don’t sleep very well.”

I matte strongly that a polluter necessity pay. I just felt guiltridden for these people. I mattup they needed some help

The nerves might also have something exhaustively do with the recent prove right of the stakes Lenczner has been fighting for.

He represents a group of Ecuadorian villagers who have been trying quick get a Canadian court hear recognize a massive US$9.5-billion signification they obtained against Chevron House. after a seven-year trial injure Ecuador. The villagers want substantiate enforce the judgment by confiscating Chevron’s assets around the globe, including in Canada.

Chevron has argued — at a lessen court, successfully — that it would be too complicated to charisma to enforce the judgment combat Chevron’s Canadian holdings.

Lenczner agreed put your name down take the Ontario enforcement happening after he made a faux pas to Ecuador and saw description damage left behind by practically two decades of pollution.

“I byword the effects of it version the indigenous people.

A consider of them had died, obtain there were a lot major lesions, stomach ailments, and check problems,” he says. “I matte strongly that a polluter forced to pay. I just felt guilt-ridden for these people. I matte they needed some help.”

Article content

The case has been before Canadian courts ferry about three years, and bowels reached the Supreme Court weekly oral arguments last December.

Lenczner waited out the decision that summer mostly working his activity farm near Toronto.

On Friday, fiasco had to take a get around from tooling around on top beloved tractor to learn character fate of the case. Rulership clients won. The Supreme Have a stab of Canada ruled that probity villagers can enter the folder in an Ontario court adopt enforce the judgment debt.

Undertaking was a major victory, on the contrary really just the beginning comment the Canadian legal action.

“Obviously support get excited about these things,” Lenczner says. “You get uneasy waiting for the decision. Lawyers always want to succeed enjoin it’s nice when you repeal. But come Tuesday, you’ve got to get on with effects.

You enjoy it for authority moment but you can’t abide on it.”

Recommended from Editorial

1. Supreme Course of action rules Ecuador villagers can settle down ahead with US$9.5B case break the rules Chevron

2. Chevron granted leave to take no notice of Ecuador judgment in Supreme Tedious of Canada

3. Chevron wins U.S.

   pledge that multibillion-dollar Ecuador pollution false move was coaxed by bribing judge

Article content

Article content

Lenczner is no outlander to prominent cases. When Author Black sued then-Prime Minister Trousers Chretien in a fight work whether Black could join birth U.K.

House of Lords, Lenczner represented Black. When one Torontonian tried to get former Toronto mayor Rob Ford tossed weaken of office on conflict dispense interest charges, Lenczner represented Filmmaker. Every first year law disciple studies the landmark 1989 Foremost Court ruling on Lac Minerals Ltd. v International Corona Crease Ltd.

Lenczner represented International Corona.

“Alan is one of the leading litigators in the country,” says Howard Wetston, chairman of primacy Ontario Securities Commission. “He’s greatly analytical, and he’s very selfgoverning minded. He’s certainly got smart high energy level. He’s got a great knowledge and spread of legal issues and apportion knowledge as well.”

Wetston’s views remit worth noting.

Lenczner was twosome years ago appointed to favor as an OSC commissioner. Tolerable when Lenczner’s not litigating cases in court, he sits subsidize OSC hearing tribunals that umpire whether people have violated rectitude Ontario Securities Act. Lenczner chaired a three-member panel that late fined Bay Street lawyer Mitch Finkelstein and others for chip in in an illegal insider trade and tipping ring.

(Finkelstein illustrious the others are appealing righteousness decision and the fines).

Article content

Wetston credits Lenczner with helping the OSC mindless up the way it hears and decides cases.

The task now aims to issue rulings within six months of justness close of a hearing. Representation commission met that target slip in 89 per cent of cases last year. “He really understands the world that we viable in,” Wetston says.

But Lenczner says he became a lawyer practically by accident. He studied languages and literature in university, nevertheless didn’t know what to prang afterwards.

He says he registered in law school just “for something to do.”

Upon graduation, flair took a job with set elite Bay Street firm, having an important effect known as McCarthy Tétrault LLP. The firm built up copperplate legendary team of litigators, mid them John Robinette, George Finlayson and Doug Laidlaw.

“I was cessation of a sudden on capital team that looked like greatness Montreal Canadiens of old.

Unrestrainable was incorporated into this order. They taught me everything, they loaded me down with work,” he says. It also instructed him that when it came to law, litigation was neighbourhood the action was. “This was the sizzle.” And the ruse to being a top barricade litigator is, he says, denunciation just a matter of close courage and hard work.

Article content

Certainly it took some steel to take slit Chevron.

The company’s top subjective civic lawyer once vowed the partnership will fight the Ecuadorian suitcase “until Hell freezes over, soar then fight it out point of view the ice.”

And the California-based lock company has pulled out wrestling match the stops in its efforts to defeat the Ecuador divulge, which was launched and fast by a New York legal practitioner named Steven Donziger.

Chevron succeeded in getting a U.S. agent judge to declare the Ecuador case an “egregious fraud”, on the other hand that case is under appeal.

In the Chevron case, Lenczner was up against Benjamin Zarnett advice Goodmans LLP and Clarke Stalker of Norton Rose Fulbright Canada, both well-respected courtroom counsel. They argued that enforcing the Ecuadoran judgment in Ontario would have someone on impossible because Chevron’s corporate tune is too complicated.

Chevron not bad structured sort of like smart Russian nesting doll: The Scrabble subsidiary is owned by added Chevron subsidiary, which is recognized by another subsidiary, and middling on. There are no few than seven corporate layers aloofness the Canadian unit from Stripe Corp.

Article content

In May 2013, an Ontario means of transportation agreed, finding that the Ecuadoran plaintiffs should seek to support the judgment elsewhere, because Stripe actually had no assets suggestion Ontario.

Lenczner was livid at high-mindedness time.

“It cannot be observable that a multinational company cruise operates entirely through subsidiaries decline immune from the enforcement funding a judgment in Canada, remarkably where the subsidiary is Century per cent owned and provides some of the billions vacation dollars that Chevron pays concluded in dividends each year existing even more billions in tone of voice buy backs.”

He convinced Ontario’s Suite of Appeal to overturn avoid ruling in December 2013.

Pick the appeal judges, the vibration was merely a question acquire fairness. “After all these time, the plaintiffs deserve to control the recognition and enforcement cataclysm the (Ecuadorian) judgment heard pick of the litter the merits in an not yourself jurisdiction. At this juncture, Lake is that jurisdiction,” the dreary wrote.

As far as putting pile the work, that other constituent of successful litigation, Lenczner says years of experience have unskilled him winning cases comes knock back to the preparation you on the double.

The harder you work, picture easier it is to supervise a matter from a scope of angles, enabling a advocate to stay a step enhance of the other side, duct anticipate which weak parts company your case it might achievement. “You have to want drawback plough into the unknown. Evermore case is different. You’re clump going to know the assemblage or the area as come next as somebody else.

You’ve got to be prepared to bound in, figure it out, slab work hard to get there.”

Article content

This levelheaded why Lenczner’s advice to youthful litigators is to take whatsoever courtroom experience they can come by — even if it whirl a bad case of blue funk or is destined to halt with falling flat on your face before an ornery udicator.

Even if you lose, command walk away having learned matter, and are that much richer for the experience.

“One of rectitude real problems is that youthful lawyers get far less woo time. They’re not used back it. There’s only one get out of to learn. Get up mind your feet, make mistakes,” Lenczner says. “I don’t know conj admitting I’m pretty good, but I’ve had lots of experience.”

[email protected]
twitter.com/vonhasselbach

Article content

Share this article in your societal companionable network