Lauren Pearce

This is an appeal and cross-appeal concerning the assessment of a law firm's fees under an unenforceable contingency fee agreement (CFA).

The law firm, Singer Kwinter (SK), appealed the application judge's reduction of their fees and a finding of double-billed disbursements.

Their former client, David Lima, cross-appealed the quantum meruit assessment and sought a greater reduction.

The Court of Appeal affirmed that an unenforceable CFA leads to a quantum meruit assessment, not forfeiture of fees, and reversed the double-billing finding due to procedural unfairness.

On costs, the court balanced SK's responsibility for the assessment due to non-compliance with the Solicitors Act against Lima's responsibility for the hearing's length due to rejecting reasonable settlement offers.

The applicants sought leave to appeal and appeal two commercial arbitration awards concerning Cogeco's breach of Wide Area Network (WAN) agreements.

The Arbitrator had applied damages caps and denied specific performance.

The court denied leave to appeal, finding that the applicants' grounds raised questions of mixed fact and law, not pure questions of law as required by the Arbitration Act.

The court also found the Arbitrator's decisions to be reasonable on the merits, upholding the application of damages caps and the denial of specific performance due to the applicants' failure to demonstrate the absence of a readily available substitute service.