McEwan Partners generated immediate buzz upon its formation
five years ago, and not without justification. The firm is composed of some of the most venerated litigation talent in British Columbia. Ken McEwan, a Vancouver trial veteran, forged the firm’s identity upon splitting off from his former shop of Hunter Litigation Chambers (itself a dispute-resolution powerhouse) and cherry-picking some of the city’s other prized practitioners to bolster the bench. Those included Robert Cooper, who himself left McCarthy Tétrault in 2013 to form his own boutique.)
“McEwan very much continues to be the commercial litigation powerhouse in town,” insists one peer, summing up a broadly held consensus. “They have, if not the leading practice in town, then certainly close to it.” The firm’s status as a litigation-specific boutique allows it the freedom to pivot between plaintiff and defense work, with cases that are often
fairly novel in nature. “We send a huge
amount of files to McEwan,” confirms a peer, “because they are fearless and will take on things that the rest of us just don’t, or won’t, do!”
Ken McEwan continues to be “just a huge turbine of work,” according to local peers, one of whom marvels, “I don’t even know how he handles it all! He’s going to need to clone himself
pretty soon!” Another quips, only partly in jest, "As long as Ken has a pulse, he will continue to be one of the busiest courtroom presences in Vancouver." McEwan once again proved his mettle as a trial lawyer in one of the highest-profile
cases in the country within the past year, that concerning the hotly contested control of the board of Rogers Communications, which was tried in BC. Working with counsel from Toronto (the similarly venerated litigation boutique Lax O’Sullivan), McEwan, along with
Emily Kirkpatrick, triumphed in November 2021
with a much-anticipated decision from the BC Supreme Court that confirmed the validity and enforceability of a shareholders resolution submitted by
the client Edward Rogers on behalf of the Rogers Control Trust, reconstituting the
board
of Rogers Communications. McEwan was also counsel to an individual
in an ongoing regulatory proceeding involving
Bridgemark Financial before the British Columbia
Securities
Commission involving 65 respondents, another one of the province’s biggest legal engagements. “They had a really nice win at the Court of Appeal,” offers a peer. Illustrating the firm’s versatility and the novelty of the cases it attends to, McEwan and Kirkpatrick are also working in the plaintiff capacity (along with co-counsel from Koskie Minsky in Toronto) on a class proceeding on behalf of certain groups of prisoners who have been held in solitary confinement in the
BC correctional system between 2005 and 2015. The Notice of Civil Claim alleges that British Columbia’s overuse of solitary confinement is negligent and constitutes a number of breaches of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
