Law firm expands litigation practice
Sutts, Strosberg LLP, a law firm usually associated with launching plaintiff-side class actions, is expanding its work on complex corporate litigation matters with the addition of commercial litigators David Wingfield and Nicholas Cartel to the firm’s Toronto office.
Wingfield has litigation experience working both on Bay Street and in London, England, and recently completed a stint as executive director of the federal department of justice’s antitrust and competition law division.
Cartel, who also has a doctorate in clinical biochemistry, worked with Wingfield at the DoJ and has practised as a competition lawyer with two major Bay Street firms. (Yes, you did indeed just read that a fellow named Cartel specializes in competition law.)
Windsor, Ont.-based Sutts, Strosberg has operated a small Toronto office for some time. Until now, however, that office has served mostly as a Bay Street perch for when Sutts, Strosberg lawyers need to be in Toronto to argue motions and cases.
The Toronto office has now been expanded into a permanent base, from which Wingfield and Cartel will tackle a range of complex commercial matters for both plaintiffs and defendants.
“I’m as busy as a one-armed paper hanger,” Wingfield said.
Wingfield and Cartel’s bios now appear on the firm’s website.
“I showed up at Sutts, Strosberg and the phone has not stopped ringing.”
Jay Strosberg, a partner, says the firm’s expansion into Torontobased commercial work does not mean Sutts, Strosberg is moving away from plaintiff-side class-action litigation.
“We’re not in any way abandoning the class-action practice. Business is very brisk on that front and we’re settling cases all the time. It’s more of a natural progression or an expansion,” Strosberg said.
Wingfield still does a fair bit of work in London, where he remains a member of Fountain Court Chambers.
In Toronto, he spent the two most recent years with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP. Before that he spent three years working on enforcement matters for Canada’s federal anti-trust and competition regulator, the Competition Bureau. He has also practised as a litigator with WeirFoulds LLP in Toronto.
He says he was drawn to Sutts, Strosberg because, as a small litigation boutique of 18 professionals, it has a relatively short client list.
That reduces the chances Wingfield will be prevented from taking on matters due to conflicts of interest. “It’s a law firm that pretty much lets me take any type of litigation that comes across my desk and interests me to take. I really like that.”
Wingfield said the firm will add lawyers and support staff to the Toronto office as needed. But Wingfield said his years as a government lawyer have taught him some ways to run an office using fewer resources than lawyers in private practice might be used to.
Your typical business person might not look to government as an example of efficiency, but Wingfield said the opposite is true in government legal departments.
At the DoJ, Wingfield said his section managed a pile of massive lawsuits with a very small footprint. “I’m trying to turn some of the experience that I gained in managing those files in a government setting to the private sector where there’s a tendency to have way too much back office relative to the front office.”