Civil Litigation

Most people come to a lawsuit reluctantly. A deal has fallen apart, money is owed, a reputation or a livelihood is at stake, and the other side has stopped listening. What you need first is a straight answer about where you stand.

Civil disputes reward early groundwork. Getting the documents organized, the exposure assessed, and the procedural path mapped out tends to matter more than the number of steps taken. I act for individuals and businesses from pleadings through document discovery, examinations for discovery, chambers applications, mediation and trial.

Early in a file I give a plain account of what the documents support, what the other side is likely to say, what a realistic outcome range looks like, and what it will cost to find out. That account gets updated as the evidence comes in, not saved for the week before mediation. I work from Victoria and take files from across Vancouver Island and British Columbia.