Three grads in three fields, all excellent, says Ontario Bar Association Alf Kwinter, Law’70 INSURANCE LAW The personal injury firm Singer Kwinter, started in Toronto 41 years ago, is today one of the country’s top 10 boutiques, according to Canadian Lawyer magazine, and its co-founder, Alf Kwinter, continues to earn great personal distinction, too. The international peer-review legal guide Best Lawyers calls him a leading practitioner in insurance law and personal injury litigation in Canada. The Ontario Bar Association agrees; the OBA gave him its 2015 Award of Excellence in Insurance Law. “In addition to his active involvement with the OBA’s Insurance Law Section,” says chair Audrey P. Ramsay, “Alf has a reputation for being a dedicated and fair lawyer, has achieved a number of groundbreaking decisions and awards, and is widely respected as one of the foremost insurance law experts in Ontario.” A certified specialist in civil litigation, Kwinter has appeared at every court level. For the plaintiff in Pereira v. Hamilton Township Farmers Mutual Insurance Company, he won $2.5 million, the largest verdict for punitive damages against an insurance company in the history of Canadian courts. At the Supreme Court of Canada, his successful argument in Oldfield v. Transamerica resulted in the landmark decision that the rights of innocent beneficiaries of insurance policies should stand even when the deceased insurer has died in the course of committing a crime. These are just two of the many cases that Kwinter’s fellow graduate, Justice Darla Wilson, Law’84, referred to in
her keynote address at the OBA event. So what is it that Kwinter finds most rewarding about his work? “It’s representing the ‘little guy’ in litigation against huge corporations with unlimited resources,” he says, “and winning such cases for people who could never afford such lengthy and expensive litigation, except for the contingency fees our system now allows.” Also important to Kwinter is the fact that he has convinced a court on three separate occasions to punish an insurance company for mistreating plaintiffs by imposing punitive damages. “That makes me hope that insurance companies might think twice now before they reject an otherwise fair and legitimate claim.”
Alf Kwinter – Insurance Law
44 Q U E E N ’ S L AW R E P O R T S
– LISA GRAHAM
Kevin McElcheran, Law’80 INSOLVENCY LAW For 35 years, Kevin McElcheran has helped a wide variety of clients deal with problems caused by commercial insolvency, in the process developing some better, fairer methods for their restructuring and also writing a popular book now in its third edition. He’ll be distilling all that expertise into a course for Queen’s Law students this year, but meanwhile, on May 6, the OBA recognized his work’s innovative approach with the 2015 Murray Klein Award for Excellence in Insolvency Law. “Kevin has advocated for and practised in a way that attempts to provide greater fairness in restructurings,” wrote his nominators. “He has sought to find alternative and more cost-effective ways to deliver results in an insolvency situation.” McElcheran, a former partner with McCarthy Tétrault LLP, started a mediation practice in May 2014 to deliver an alternative to traditional restructuring processes, positioning himself as a problem-solver and mediator seeking solutions rather than an advocate for just one side. His nominators remarked that this is “a role that fits Kevin’s personality well.” As a leading lawyer in his field, he is included in guides such as Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business and in various directories published by Lexpert. His book Commercial Insolvency in Canada, a practical and useful resource for lawyers, has been cited by several courts and will be issued in its third edition this fall. What drew McElcheran to the insolvency field? “I always enjoyed the collaboration and the creative process of solving mixed legal and business problems, both in the court room and behind the scenes where business-saving deals are negotiated,” he says. “The stakes were always high, and the results – businesses and jobs saved – were worthwhile. It has not