A Montréal plaintiff class-action shop, Consumer Law Group is largely the vehicle of Jeff Orenstein, a prolific class-action filer. “Jeff is definitely popping up in the mix, filing a lot of class actions and getting better and better at them,” claims one peer. Another notes, “Jeff takes complicated cases and is a reasonable guy. I had him in a few pharma cases, and I noticed he has become a lot more focused and pretty impressive.” Clients are equally impressed. One testifies, “All the cases that Jeff handled were successful. He was an excellent pleader in front of a judge. [He has] Good reaction time and is quick on his feet. He was an outstanding negotiator.” Orenstein has taken a role in an astonishingly prolific number of cases. Just a sample of several includes his position as one of the lead lawyers in the class action representing victims from the town that was destroyed by the oil spill and explosion, which killed 47 people. Through the bankruptcy court, the case was settled with almost all of the defendants for a global settlement amount of $460 million. Orenstein is also the lead lawyer in a class action against Amazon for sales tax charged on basic groceries, where there should be no sales tax charged (though it was for approximately seven years). Amazon has challenged the court’s jurisdiction and Orenstein recently won on this issue in the Court of Appeal. An appeal by Amazon has been filed with the Supreme Court of Canada. Orenstein is also lead counsel in a class action instituted in Québec against Ford for its miscalculation and misrepresentation of certain road-testing factors during vehicle certification testing and its use of a “Mileage Cheat Device” to misrepresent and conceal the true kilometrage of certain Ford vehicles and the vehicle emissions.
