28 | Securities Enforcement
LEXPERT®Ranked Lawyers
Melchers, Sophie
Norton Rose Fulbright
Canada LLP
(514) 847-4784
sophie.melchers@
nortonrosefulbright.com
Ms. Melchers focuses
on commercial,
corporate and securities
litigation, including
hostile take-overs,
dissenting shareholder
remedies, shareholders'
agreements, plans of
arrangement, rights of
fi rst refusal and insider
trading.
Mitchell, QC,
Warren J.A.
Thorsteinssons LLP
(604) 689-1261
wjamitchell@thor.ca
Mr. Mitchell focuses on
large case tax litigation.
He has appeared as
counsel in the provincial,
trial and appellate
divisions of British
Columbia and Ontario,
and in the Tax Court of
Canada, Federal Court
and the SCC.
Morrison, F. Paul
McCarthy Tétrault LLP
(416) 601-7887
pmorriso@mccarthy.ca
Described in legal
journals as "a go-to
lawyer for the most
complex cases." Mr.
Morrison's commercial
litigation practice
embraces class actions,
securities, competition,
insolvency, professional
and products liability,
and arbitration matters.
Millar, W.A. Derry
WeirFoulds LLP
(416) 947-5021
dmillar@weirfoulds.com
Mr. Millar practises
exclusively civil litigation
and administrative law
and has appeared in all
levels of court in Ontario,
the SCC & the FCC, and
many administrative
tribunals. From 2008–
2010 he was the Treasurer
of the Law Society of
Upper Canada.
Mongeau, Éric
Stikeman Elliott LLP
(514) 397-3043
emongeau@s
tikeman.com
Mr. Mongeau's practice
is focused in the
energy, transportation,
telecommunications and
construction sectors,
and in the fi elds of
administrative law and
defamation law, with a
particular expertise in
commercial arbitration.
Morse, Jerome R.
Morse Shannon LLP
(416) 941-5867
jmorse@
morseshannon.com
Mr. Morse is a Fellow of
the American College of
Trial Lawyers. His practice
includes personal injury,
medical malpractice,
product liability,
professional negligence,
corporate and
commercial insurance
litigation.
"It may be the only way to handle very complex cases that
are lying in the balance, or would take years to complete
without suffi cient resources to do it," Campion says. "You
have to weigh how long, how expensive and how secure a
prosecution is going to be — can you actually win the case?
"If you're the regulator there is a negative attached to tak-
ing cases forward and losing if it happens all the time — that
hardly creates the kind of deterrence you might like. So I see
a no-contest settlement as very much part of the arsenal, and
regulators should use it."
e OSC's new regime rules will not permit no-contest
settlements in cases of fraud, abuse of markets, criminal cases
or where someone has tried to obstruct OSC investigations,
which means it won't be on off er to anyone believed to be
involved in Ponzi schemes or boiler-room operations.
Andrew Gray, a litigation partner at Torys LLP, says in the
US, the SEC is dialling back the use of no-admission settle-
ments to roughly the same level.
" e SEC has ended up saying it will be doing no-contest
settlements, but fewer of them
and not in cases involving seri-
ous cases of intentional wrong-
doing. In those cases the SEC
will require admissions — and
that's sort of where the OSC has
ended up.
"So where it looked like they
were going to be ships passing in
the night, I think they have actu-
ally ended up in the same port."
He believes where no-ad-
mission settlements will see the
most use is in the type of case where there has been an inad-
vertent disclosure error and the company has moved to bol-
ster its internal systems so it doesn't happen again.
While no-contest settlements have only been adopted
in Ontario so far, what the OSC does in enforcement has a
ripple eff ect right across the country because its jurisdiction
extends to any company that trades on the Toronto Stock
Exchange, says Julie-Martine Loranger, a litigation partner at
McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Montreal.
Loranger welcomes no-contest settlements as a positive
development for people who may have inadvertently run
afoul of securities laws without intending to commit fraud.
She says it can help preserve their relationship with the secu-
rities commission staff from becoming needlessly adversarial.
" e relationship with a regulator is like a marriage," she
says. "You may fi ght with them, but you wake up the next
day and they're still there. So while you may want to get
into the ring with the regulator, you don't want a full box-
ing match because they're going to regulate you and keep
"THERE HAVE BEEN OUTRIGHT ACQUITTALS
ON FOUR INSIDER TRADING CASES — THIS IS WHAT
MOST PEOPLE IN ALBERTA ARE TALKING ABOUT
IN ENFORCEMENT ISSUES THESE DAYS. BUT ALL
THESE CASES ARE HELPING THEM DETERMINE
WHAT THE PANELS WILL CONSIDER IT CONVINCING
THAT THERE'S BEEN AN ILLEGAL TRADE."
– John Blair, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
