Calgary’s Burnet Duckworth & Palmer enjoys a historic reputation in the market while at the same time keeping an eye on the future, boasting an array of cutting-edge work attended to by an increasingly younger group of litigators. “Burnet Duckworth has been crazy busy this year because they have seven people up against seven people from [a major regional firm] in a major landlord-tenant case concerning a building in Downtown Calgary.” Clients have turned out to the champion the firm’s cause; one testifies, “I use other firms but I prefer Burnet Duckworth, as they allowed me to be more involved with the process and they seemed to me more structured, in an easier-to-follow manner. BDP is typically more responsive and has a greater bench strength given the comparative size, and their advice is typically more practical and commercially savvy.
Jeff Sharpe, long a key figure and driving force in the firm’s group, is championed by peers for his all-purpose commercial litigation prowess. “Jeff is the main senior strength in that group. I’m against him right now, and he is as good as it gets,” asserts a peer, voicing the consensus of several others. Sharpe leads a team, which includes
Andrew Sunter, Robert Martz and
Susan Fader, representing CNOOC Petroleum North America in a case involving a significant pipeline failure near the one of the client’s facilities. The claim involves allegations of negligence against the design engineers and the providers of the novel pipe-in-pipe system. David de Groot led a team, which also included Martz and Joanne Luu, acting for Peace River Hydro Partners, which was formed to construct the Site C Dam in British Columbia, in a commercial dispute that wound its way to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2022. Martz led a precedent-setting class action that was brought on behalf of female firefighters and employees of the City of Leduc who had been subject to 20 years of discrimination, sexual misconduct, and sexual harassment. The class action sought damages for this and to allow others to come forward with similar claims. The class action was certified and settled in July 2023 and includes the largest per-person settlements ever in Canada for individual claimants in a workplace sexual-misconduct claim. Acting with Martz on this matter is Richard Steele, who attends principally to employment law.
Steele represents the plaintiff in a claim seeking approximately $750,000 in damages for wrongful dismissal and contractual entitlements. The counterclaim for approximately $1.5 million alleges breaches of fiduciary and other duties, and responsibility for losses suffered by corporate entities while under the plaintiff's leadership.
All-purpose commercial litigator James Murphy, along with Steele, is counsel to DIRTT Environmental, which has brought lawsuits in Alberta and the US against several of its founders, who have since departed to a new company, and numerous other departed employees, alleging that the defendants conspired to misappropriate its confidential and proprietary information and then use it to compete with DIRTT in the interior construction market. DIRTT also alleged that the founders violated the fiduciary duties they owed to DIRTT and the restrictive covenants contained in the Executive Employment Agreements they entered into with DIRTT as part of its initial public offering. “James Murphy is a lovely guy,” offers a peer, who goes further to qualify, “but do not underestimate him in court! I once witnessed an opposing counsel who made the mistake of doing so, being extremely rude and disrespectful to him, and James just was came back hard and crushed them. I was impressed, and so was the judge. [James] is tough!”
