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www.definityfinancial.com
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info@gluckstein.com
519-570-8200
111 Westmount Road South P.O. Box 2000 Waterloo, ON N2J 4S4
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2017 - Present
Tenure at
current position
22
Years in the industry
WINNER:
Definity Financial
Corporation
Banking and Financial Institutions Law Department of the Year
@definityfc
David Lackman
Senior Counsel & Lawyer
Derek Nicholson
Trial Lawyer
Erin Ellis
Associate Lawyer
Innes Dey
Senior Vice-President, Legal and Strategy, Definity Financial Corporation
David graduated with Honours from Montreal’s McGill University in 1978. He next received his Juris Doctorate degree, cum laude, from Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles. In 1982 he was admitted by the Supreme Court of California to practice as an Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law in the courts of California. After receiving his Certificate of Qualification through the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, in 1985 David was admitted by the Law Society of Ontario as a Barrister, Solicitor and Notary Public. David has achieved outstanding results in personal injury claims against some of the country’s largest corporations, including railways.
Senior Counsel & Lawyer
David Lackman
Derek Nicholson has been one of Ottawa’s leading Civil Trial Lawyers since 1980. In his early years of practice, he focused on Defense Insurance work representing several major insurance companies, including Chubb Insurance and Royal Insurance. He has also represented many high-profile clients, including the Attorney General of Canada in a trial against Boeing USA, CJOH-TV, and Blue Line Taxi. In the last forty years, he has focused on Personal Injury work, especially in Catastrophic Injury victims (including those affected by traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and multiple injuries resulting in a 55% whole body impairment as defined under the Insurance legislation).
Trial Lawyer
Derek Nicholson
Erin received her Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University (2003) and her law degree from Queen’s University (2007). She was called to the Ontario Bar in 2008. Erin has over a decade of experience and a proven track record of success advocating for survivors of both recent and historical sexual and physical abuse. She represents plaintiffs from across Canada, demanding acknowledgment and compensation for the harms perpetrated or facilitated by individuals and institutions, including abuse by teachers, coaches, relatives, foster parents, doctors, and clergy. Erin's extensive experience allows her to work effectively with her clients to determine the best approach for each individual case.
Associate Lawyer
Erin Ellis
Innes Dey has been Senior Vice-President, Legal and Strategy of Economical Insurance since February 2018. He joined Economical Insurance in November 2011, serving in various senior executive roles, including as Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Risk Officer and Chief Legal Officer.
Senior Vice-President, Legal and Strategy, Definity Financial Corporation
Innes Dey
Leonard H. Kunka
Personal Injury
Leonard Kunka has been a partner at Thomson Rogers since 1989. Leonard’s litigation practice is dedicated to helping victims and families who are coping with the effects of a serious injury. Leonard has extensive trial experience, successfully representing seriously injured individuals and their families, in all types of injury cases. His litigation department includes an experienced and caring group of law clerks and legal assistants who work with him as a team to achieve the best possible results for his clients. Leonard’s father suffered a devastating traumatic brain injury many years ago. Living with a family member who was recovering from a traumatic brain injury has given him a unique understanding of the challenges faced by an individual with a head injury. This experience has also created in him, compassion and empathy for injured persons and their families.
Personal Injury
Leonard H. Kunka
Aleks Mladenovic
Personal Injury
Darcy R. Merkur
Personal Injury
Michael L. Bennett
Personal Injury
Sloan H. Mandel
Personal Injury
David F. MacDonald
Personal Injury
Aleks Mladenovic is a partner in the Personal Injury Group at Thomson Rogers with a particular focus on health law, medical malpractice and personal injury litigation. He has represented personal injury plaintiffs at the trial and appellate court levels. Aleks has authored numerous articles on litigation and the importance of the litigation process in ensuring safety in medical care. He is a member of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, The Advocates’ Society and the Medical-Legal Society. Prior to joining Thomson Rogers, Aleks worked in the United States and Canada on behalf of physicians in medical negligence matters. As such, Aleks has a keen understanding of both sides in personal injury matters and medical cases in particular.
Personal Injury
Aleks Mladenovic
Darcy Merkur is a partner at Thomson Rogers. As a trauma lawyer and a Certified Specialist in Civil Litigation, Darcy handles a multitude of complex, serious personal injury cases on behalf of accident victims and their families and has had many great successes. He has built a reputation as an innovator in the personal injury field having designed a revolutionary computer program for use in quantifying personal injury claims titled “The Ontario Personal Injury Damages Calculator.” Darcy is proud to hold numerous prestigious credentials and is the only lawyer in Canada Certified as a Brain Injury Specialist by the Brain Injury Association of America.
Personal Injury
Darcy R. Merkur
Michael Bennett was admitted to the Law Society of Ontario in 2000. Since that time, he has worked exclusively in the field of Personal Injury Law. In his first two years of practice, Michael represented several insurance companies and the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee. Michael has now restricted his practice to the representation of injured persons and their families. Michael has appeared before the Ontario Court of Appeal, Superior Court of Justice of Ontario, Financial Services Commission of Ontario, the Licencing Appeals Tribunal and other regulatory bodies on subjects concerning insurance coverage, benefit entitlements, the rights and responsibilities of insurers and Catastrophic Impairment issues. Michael is willing to go the extra mile to see clients receive the treatment they require and deserve with a special interest in complicated orthopaedic injuries, brain injuries and spinal cord injuries. Michael Bennett has worked at Thomson Rogers since 2002 and has been a partner since 2008.
Personal Injury
Michael L. Bennett
Sloan Mandel is a senior partner at the law firm Thomson Rogers. His practice focuses exclusively on personal injury and medical malpractice litigation on behalf of plaintiffs. Sloan has been published extensively in both medical and legal texts and journals. He is a past member of the Ontario Bar Association Health Law Executive and regularly lectures doctors, lawyers, and health care professionals at a variety of educational seminars. Sloan has a wealth of court and litigation experience, achieving some of Ontario’s largest personal injury and medical malpractice settlements and judgements.
Personal Injury
Sloan H. Mandel
David MacDonald is a senior partner at Thomson Rogers. He takes pride in working with his clients and engaging excellent rehabilitation professionals, devoting his full efforts to help his clients recover, work towards restoring meaningful and productive lives and receive maximum compensation for their losses. David MacDonald is a trial lawyer who conducted Toronto’s first personal injury paperless iPad trial. He has been going to trial and settling catastrophic plaintiff personal injury cases and helping car, pedestrian, ATV, motorcycle and boating accident victims who have suffered catastrophic injuries for more than twenty-five years. David has led as a board member of Peel Halton, Toronto and Hamilton Brain Injury Associations. In 2003, the Ontario government selected David from all personal injury lawyers in the province and appointed him to the Superintendent’s Executive Committee to implement Ontario’s Auto Reforms. David publishes and lectures to lawyers, adjusters and health care professionals on Catastrophic Injury Determination across the province.
Personal Injury
David F. MacDonald
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Definity’s legal team is a diverse group of high performing professionals, purpose-built through years of thoughtful talent selection, engaged leadership and professional development. The department now consists of more than 70 lawyers with core competencies spanning commercial contracting, distribution management, market conduct, privacy, compliance, and litigation management, together with corporate disciplines such as capital markets and M&A transaction execution, corporate governance and ESG, government relations and regulatory affairs. With this breadth, the team is positioned and empowered to deliver end-to-end solutions for internal clients, with targeted augmentation by strategic external partners.
2021 was a banner year for the team, marked not only by the significant volume of sophisticated legal work executed, but by the high degree of difficulty involved. Economical’s demutualization, and the emergence of Definity Financial serve as a landmark example of the depth and breadth of the legal team’s expertise and talent. Preceded by years of effort to shepherd an extremely complex deal process to its conclusion, 2021 saw the team’s hard work and dedication culminate in a C$1.6-billion IPO and C$800-million concurrent private placements from cornerstone investors. A milestone achievement as the first demutualization of its kind in Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry and the second largest debut ever in TSX history.
In addition to notable endorsements from strategic investors, those transactions were the product of complex multi-stakeholder negotiations, creative deal structuring, and proactive regulatory relations. Corporately, it required the team to build capabilities across a broad range of disciplines to not only marshal the complexity of concurrent demutualization and IPO processes, but to support the company’s M&A agenda as well.
For the company’s demutualization to become reality, a completely novel legal framework was required, one with elaborate regulatory checks and balances designed to facilitate transparency, fair treatment of policyholders, and effective oversight. Highlights included court-supervised, multi-stakeholder negotiations, multiple special meeting seeking policyholder approvals , a process of soliciting policyholder consideration preferences, extensive review and final approvals from OSFI and the Minister of Finance and the distribution of financial benefits to more than 630,000 eligible policyholders. The novelty of the Economical deal provided a focused opportunity for the internal team to develop a level of expertise comparable to top tier external practices.
In parallel, the company maintained its pace of innovation and technology transformation, accelerating the company’s competitiveness in a rapidly changing insurance industry and driving persistent peak demand and contracting complexity within its vendor management practice – all while managing the ongoing volume of work across “business as usual” corporate disciplines including regulatory, market conduct, cybersecurity, and privacy. As a leading insurance company, Definity’s core insurance business is also supported by a robust team of claims litigation professionals, underscoring the breadth of expertise within the legal team
A force to be reckoned with whether tackling the intricacies of a landmark transaction or handling day-to-day tasks, Definity’s legal team delivers superb-quality work with laser-like precision.
Powerhouse group driven by talent selection, engaged leadership and professional development
Definity’s purpose-built legal team a force to be reckoned with