The Montréal office of international conglomerate Dentons is engaged in several high-stakes disputes touching on elements of construction and infrastructure, class actions and franchise law. The latter of these practices is principally the domain of Margaret Weltrowska, a key member of this office’s litigation team and someone who also handles consumer class actions, privacy class actions and competition work. Weltrowska represents Amazon in the context of a class action seeking the recovery of sales tax charged and remitted to the relevant tax authorities by Amazon on goods purchased by Québec consumers that were allegedly not taxable, as well as the award of punitive damages under the Québec Consumer Protection Act. Weltrowska also defended UPS in a file in which a former client claimed $2.4 million from UPS, representing the anti-dumping and countervailing duties the former client paid to the Canada Border Services Agency following the issuance of 30 detailed adjustment statements for aluminum columns and rails imported from China. The former client alleged that UPS committed faults in providing erroneous custom broker advice and analysis on antidumping duties that misled the former client, which UPS strongly denied. Further to a week-long trial, the Superior Court dismissed the claim, with costs. Over the summer of 2020, this office also welcomed the arrival of Emil Vidracsu, formerly a star with Lavery. “Emil is a brilliant lawyer,” raves a peer. “He is very strong and brings a lot of construction litigation experience. He also has very strong Aboriginal law experience, representing Hydro Québec in several Aboriginal engagements. [There are] Billions of dollars at issue, [these are] huge files.”
