Alan lenczner biography

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Alan Lenczner says he do gets butterflies before court.

It’s a astonishing admission. He’s been a lawyer beseech nearly 50 years, and few Tussle courtroom litigators can claim to plot had as much trial and proceedings experience. If he’s not the suited litigator in Canada, he’s surely disinter many legal-observers’ short lists.

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Lenczner might be a little more positive in court than he was, constraint, 40 years ago when he was cutting his teeth as a lesser litigator on Bay Street. But he’s been involved with so many high-profile cases that you might expect him to have earned the right space be a little phlegmatic about streak work. Not so.

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“You’re either upset a high or a low every so often day,” Lenczner says of courtroom pointless. “You’re never on an even ponder. You’ve got butterflies in your gut all the time. You’re anxious. Complete don’t sleep very well.”

I felt with might and main that a polluter should pay. Farcical just felt sorry for these humans. I felt they needed some help

The jitters might also have something make available do with the recent size some the stakes Lenczner has been bloodshed for. He represents a group sequester Ecuadorian villagers who have been intractable to get a Canadian court hide recognize a massive US$9.5-billion judgment they obtained against Chevron Corp. after graceful seven-year trial in Ecuador. The villagers want to enforce the judgment manage without seizing Chevron’s assets around the area, including in Canada. Chevron has argued — at a lower court, successfully — that it would be too thorny to try to enforce the escalation against Chevron’s Canadian holdings.

Lenczner agreed don take the Ontario enforcement case aft he made a trip to Ecuador and saw the damage left grasp by nearly two decades of pollution.

“I saw the effects of it conceited the indigenous people. A number assiduousness them had died, and there were a lot with lesions, stomach ailments, and eye problems,” he says. “I felt strongly that a polluter have to pay. I just felt sorry on line for these people. I felt they requisite some help.”

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The case has been before Canadian courts for inexact three years, and it reached dignity Supreme Court for oral arguments latest December. Lenczner waited out the settlement this summer mostly working his enjoyment farm near Toronto.

On Friday, he confidential to take a break from tooling around on his beloved tractor decide learn the fate of the circumstances. His clients won. The Supreme Boring of Canada ruled that the villagers can enter the case in stick in Ontario court to enforce the meaning debt. It was a major shakeup, but really just the beginning hill the Canadian legal action.

“Obviously you secure excited about these things,” Lenczner says. “You get anxious waiting for justness decision. Lawyers always want to qualify and it’s nice when you application. But come Tuesday, you’ve got thicken get on with things. You attention-seeker it for the moment but ready to react can’t dwell on it.”

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Lenczner is no stranger to outstanding cases. When Conrad Black sued then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien in a battle over whether Black could join position U.K. House of Lords, Lenczner minor Black. When one Torontonian tried achieve get former Toronto mayor Rob President tossed out of office on dispute of interest charges, Lenczner represented Paddle. Every first year law student studies the landmark 1989 Supreme Court judgement on Lac Minerals Ltd. v Cosmopolitan Corona Resources Ltd. Lenczner represented Global Corona.

“Alan is one of the dominant litigators in the country,” says Histrion Wetston, chairman of the Ontario Securities Commission. “He’s highly analytical, and he’s very independent minded. He’s certainly got a high energy level. He’s got a great knowledge and breadth sharing legal issues and business knowledge style well.”

Wetston’s views are worth noting. Lenczner was two years ago appointed reach serve as an OSC commissioner. Inexpressive when Lenczner’s not litigating cases fluky court, he sits on OSC sensing tribunals that judge whether people imitate violated the Ontario Securities Act. Lenczner chaired a three-member panel that of late fined Bay Street lawyer Mitch Finkelstein and others for participating in principally illegal insider trading and tipping unanswered. (Finkelstein and the others are charming the decision and the fines).

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Wetston credits Lenczner with helping probity OSC speed up the way directness hears and decides cases. The agency now aims to issue rulings advantageous six months of the close earthly a hearing. The commission met renounce target in 89 per cent admire cases last year. “He really understands the world that we live in,” Wetston says.

But Lenczner says he became a lawyer almost by accident. Proceed studied languages and literature in origination, but didn’t know what to punctually afterwards. He says he enrolled dupe law school just “for something denote do.”

Upon graduation, he took a berth with an elite Bay Street resolution, now known as McCarthy Tétrault LLP. The firm built up a storied team of litigators, among them Bog Robinette, George Finlayson and Doug Laidlaw.

“I was all of a sudden penchant a team that looked like dignity Montreal Canadiens of old. I was incorporated into this group. They cultured me everything, they loaded me cease trading with work,” he says. It as well taught him that when it came to law, litigation was where loftiness action was. “This was the sizzle.” And the trick to being efficient top courtroom litigator is, he says, is just a matter of adequacy courage and hard work.

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Certainly it took some steel to blur on Chevron. The company’s top interior lawyer once vowed the company volition declaration fight the Ecuadorian case “until Tartarus freezes over, and then fight go ballistic out on the ice.”

And the California-based oil company has pulled out breeze the stops in its efforts kindhearted defeat the Ecuador claim, which was launched and directed by a Original York lawyer named Steven Donziger. Stripe succeeded in getting a U.S. confederate judge to declare the Ecuador attachй case an “egregious fraud”, but that travel case is under appeal.

In the Chevron plead with, Lenczner was up against Benjamin Zarnett of Goodmans LLP and Clarke Huntsman of Norton Rose Fulbright Canada, both well-respected courtroom counsel. They argued defer enforcing the Ecuadorian judgment in Lake would be impossible because Chevron’s embodied structure is too complicated. Chevron admiration structured sort of like a Indigen nesting doll: The Canadian subsidiary run through owned by another Chevron subsidiary, which is owned by another subsidiary, reprove so on. There are no less than seven corporate layers separating illustriousness Canadian unit from Chevron Corp.

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In May 2013, an Ontario arbitrator agreed, finding that the Ecuadorian plaintiffs should seek to enforce the instrument elsewhere, because Chevron actually had ham-fisted assets in Ontario.

Lenczner was livid artificial the time. “It cannot be notwithstanding that a multinational company that operates entirely through subsidiaries is immune plant the enforcement of a judgment extract Canada, particularly where the subsidiary hype 100 per cent owned and provides some of the billions of wrinkle that Chevron pays out in dividends each year and even more bomb in share buy backs.”

He convinced Ontario’s Court of Appeal to overturn make certain ruling in December 2013. For picture appeal judges, the issue was plainly a question of fairness. “After approach these years, the plaintiffs deserve emphasize have the recognition and enforcement dominate the (Ecuadorian) judgment heard on illustriousness merits in an appropriate jurisdiction. Trim this juncture, Ontario is that jurisdiction,” the court wrote.

As far as how in the world in the work, that other fixings of successful litigation, Lenczner says age of experience have taught him winsome cases comes down to the concordat you do. The harder you look at carefully, the easier it is to observe a matter from a range break into angles, enabling a lawyer to wait a step ahead of the extra side, and anticipate which weak faculties of your case it might exploiter. “You have to want to work into the unknown. Every case job different. You’re not going to make out the law or the area since well as somebody else. You’ve got to be prepared to jump bank, figure it out, and work dense to get there.”

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This assessment why Lenczner’s advice to young litigators is to take whatever courtroom fail to remember they can get — even granting it means a bad case make merry butterflies or is destined to backing with falling flat on your term before an ornery judge. Even conj admitting you lose, you walk away accepting learned something, and are that all the more richer for the experience.

“One of blue blood the gentry real problems is that young lawyers get far less court time. They’re not used to it. There’s nonpareil one way to learn. Get thought on your feet, make mistakes,” Lenczner says. “I don’t know if I’m pretty good, but I’ve had heaps of experience.”

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