Toronto boutique Waddell Phillips came into being when Margaret
Waddell launched the firm with seasoned barrister John Kingman Phillips as a purely litigation-centric boutique free to take on a diverse spectrum of work in either the plaintiff or defense capacities. “Marg wanted to do class actions, some more challenging ones, which may or may not be financially successful but are important to do,” asserts a supportive peer. “John Phillips is very interested in the social justice agenda, so this firm was a great fit for him.” Waddell Phillips’s cases cover novel areas such as sexual assault, product liability, Aboriginal law, human rights and other areas that “get a lot of attention and political results.”
One peer states, “John does a lot of the First Nations work, which are big, long, complicated cases, and you often have to wait a while to get paid on them.” Phillips’s tenacity and dedication to these cases recently paid off with the January 2023 announcement of a milestone $2.8 billion settlement with Canada that recognizes the collective harms suffered by Indigenous communities caused by Indian Residential Schools. This class action alleged that the Government of Canada is responsible for the collective damages to Indigenous communities caused by these controversial institutions, including collective loss of language and culture and damage to the social fabric.
Cory Wanless, who was welcomed into the firm partnership two years ago and has hit the ground running, building a relatively new practice that focuses on human rights and corporate and police accountability. Wanless has pursued this path with dogged aplomb. In an example, Wanless is leading litigations against a Canadian mining company that was alleged to have engaged in egregious behavior in Guatemala including violence and rape. Wanless is also leading matters concerning alleged racial profiling in various capacities of local law enforcement, including a recent case concerning a First Nations individual who allegedly refused to comply with police orders while bicycling, stopped to enter his home, and was subsequently tased (along with his brother, who arrived to protest this treatment.) Wanless is co-leading another case concerning the criteria employed by Canada’s immigration system when determining what individuals are considered “flight risks.”
