The commercial litigation group deals with a wide range of business disputes before all civil courts having jurisdiction in the Province of Alberta, from the Court of Queen's Bench to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.

We take a practical, business oriented approach to our commercial litigation practice. We at all times keep foremost in our minds the inescapable fact that commercial litigation can be costly, risky and time consuming for our clients. With that in mind, we focus on a practical, common sense approach to the resolution of business disputes. We ensure from the outset that our clients are advised of their legal position and of the reasonably anticipated results of any legal proceedings that may be undertaken. We take care in communicating with our clients from the outset to develop an appropriate strategic approach to each problem. That sometimes involves negotiation, mediation or arbitration in lieu of litigation. Sometimes, however, a case requires that our clients take a stand. When that occurs, our litigators have been highly successful in conducting carefully researched, thoroughly documented commercial litigation at both the trial and appellate level.

In the oil and gas industry we have litigated all manner of contractual and tortious claims. Those have included litigation concerning freehold leases, royalty trusts, farm-out agreements, gross overriding royalty agreements, facility operating agreements, loan agreements, CAPL operating agreements and PASWC accounting procedures. Our work also includes a considerable amount of litigation concerning securities issues, employment and wrongful dismissal, product liability, auditor negligence, construction and intellectual property.

A considerable amount of the litigation practice today involves commercial arbitration. We have extensive experience involving private domestic arbitration, under the Alberta Arbitration Act, as well as arbitration under the International Commercial Arbitration Act (Alberta). The disputes that we have taken to arbitration for our clients have involved all manner of business and commercial issues including, for example, issues pertaining to natural gas pricing, pipeline transportation tariffs and facilities operations.