McMillan’s Vancouver office is smaller than its Toronto epicenter, but it houses one of the firm’s most visible and celebrated partners,
Joan Young. “Joan is top of mind,” confirms a peer. “She does a lot of product liability, and she often pairs with Toronto or Montréal partners for class actions.” Another peer observes, “Joan is doing more competition class action work, and I have a lot of time for her.” Illustrating both assertions above, Young acts with
Éric Vallières in the Montréal office for Apple in class actions brought in 2021 that seek to re-characterize the monopolization cases against Google in the US related to internet advertising and search engines into an alleged market allocation agreement with Apple whereby Apple would have agreed not to develop its own search engine. The cases cover all direct and indirect purchasers of internet search advertising services in Canada since 2005. Young also acts with Toronto’s
Lisa Parliament and Montréal’s Sidney Elbaz for Mitsubishi on a consumer product liability class action that arose from alleged faulty airbag control units found in various models of Toyota, Kia, Hyundai, Honda, and Mitsubishi vehicles. The class plaintiff alleged the airbag control unit defect was common across all the manufacturers vehicles and model years, despite some models having regulatory recalls and repaired. Young also acts with Toronto’s
Melanie Harmer and Adam Chisholm act for Affinor on a class action claim for conspiracy, negligent or fraudulent misrepresentation, and statutory damages for secondary market liability pursuant to securities legislation.
In the Toronto office of McMillan, Brett Harrison represents Citibank in bringing an application before the Ontario Superior Court for certain relief against a high-profile Mexican high net worth individual and his related-investment vehicles. The bank sought disclosure regarding a global investment structure that includes Canadian partnerships, Delaware LLCs and Cayman segregated portfolio corporations to hold Spanish real estate investments.
Jeffrey Levine, along with Stephen Brown-Okruhlik and
Samantha Gordon, represents cannabis market entity iAnthus in defending a secondary-market securities class action alleging misrepresentations arising from public disclosure. The case involves allegations of various misrepresentations by iAnthus and its leadership. The claim involves alleged losses to investors during a period when iAnthus’ market capitalization fell by over $100 million. The McMillan team successfully opposed a motion seeking broad pre-discovery production in connection with the plaintiff’s motion for leave to proceed with the statutory claim.
