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22 www.canadianlawyermag.com TOP PERSONAL INJURY BOUTIQUES 2022 says, adding that "it is one way to deal with the backlog of cases in our overburdened justice system." Malpractice law as a growth area About a decade ago, when Charles Gluck- stein took over the firm his father had founded in the 1960s, one of the first things he realized was that personal injury cases resulting from motor vehicle accidents were on the wane. Thanks to better-made cars with more safety features (at the prompting of the insurance industry), and laws in Ontario and elsewhere making it harder to get compensation for certain types of inju- ries, "the writing was on the wall." "My view was if you're just practicing personal injury and only doing motor vehicle cases, you're probably not going to sustain a practice," he says. The answer to a somewhat unsure future was to "ramp up and bring in expertise around medical malpractice." Adds Gluckstein: "We've been doing medmal for more than 10 years, and it's probably getting close to being about a third of what we do, in terms of value from settle- ments." The firm is also developing another area of expertise in cases dealing with sexual abuse litigation. "We've broadened our practice away from motor vehicle cases, and eventually, it will be more like 25 percent of what we do." Momentum for mass tort litigation The concept of mass tort litigation continues to evolve in personal injury legal practice. No longer are lawyers automatically filing class actions for incidents in which poten- tial plaintiffs have suffered serious physical injury or death. "Firms that don't emphasize the benefits of working together in the office could see a decline in their culture and employee retention" Adam Wagman, Howie, Sacks & Harvey One area where this trend is particularly apparent is aviation cases. For example, on Jan. 8, 2020, Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752 was shot out of the sky by Iranian military personnel, resulting in the death of everyone on board. A Canadian class action was commenced, but approximately 118 of the eligible 138 families who suffered losses opted out of the class action and brought their claims via a mass tort instead. This approach provides the strength in numbers of a class action but gives each plaintiff and their family the autonomy to determine how their case shall proceed, says Paul Miller with HSH. "In my experience, plaintiffs have very different goals and objectives in litigation." Gluckstein agrees, noting that "from a client point of view, the mass tort system is much more personal for them." He says even if the compensation would be similar to what would be achieved in a class action, a mass tort case allows each case to be assessed separately, "clients in the end may feel more vindicated." With the advent of the new Class Proceed- ings Act in Ontario, Miller says it is unclear if personal injury class actions will be able to regain traction. That is especially the case in situations where diverse damages may be why a class is not certified in the future. "It looks like mass tort is going to be the preferred method of proceeding in many situations," says Gluckstein, who points out he has two lawyers at his firm who work exclusively on mass tort cases. Providing what clients want Chris Correia of Correia and Collins in New Brunswick remembers back in the early SPECIAL REPORT