Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m M a r c h 2 0 1 4 11 Two Calgary lawyers, one gallery, and a shattered Rodin i t may be a cheap reproduction or it may be the creation of a master. Whatever it is, the 85-centimetre plas- ter statue credited to famed French sculptor Auguste Rodin called "Walking Man" is at the centre of a long and litigious battle that shows no signs of ending any time soon. The most recent courtroom confrontation ended late last year. Now the owners, unhappy with that judgment, are seeking to go before the Ontario Court of Appeal. The "foundry plaster" was appraised by several art experts and has been valued at close to a $500,000, but other experts, includ- ing those from the Museé Rodin in Paris, question the reputed Rodin's provenance. The dispute over the work's authenticity led Ontario Superior Court Justice Guy DiTomaso to note in his Longo v. MacLaren ruling the statue could be nothing more than "a cheap value- less fake." However valuable it may once have been, it is now in pieces in a box held, at this writing, in a Toronto storage facility where it has been since 2006. Who is responsible for the destruction of the statue, who must pay whom for the dam- age, and how much? All good questions but despite years of litigation, they remain unanswered. Late last year, essentially on a technical- ity, DiTomaso threw out a suit for $500,000 in damages brought by the two Calgary lawyers — Grant Vogeli and Dino DeLuca, both partners of Burnet Duckworth & Palmer LLP — who own the statue along with a third person. They alleged the Rodin was irretrievably damaged in transit when under the control of the MacLaren Art Centre. They argued the gallery was ulti- mately responsible, because as custodian of the plaster, it failed in the duty of care it owed to them. The MacLaren is a small, municipally supported art gallery in Barrie, Ont., about 90 km north of Toronto. In 2000, the Calgary lawyers agreed to lend the plaster to the MacLaren and it has been trouble almost ever since. "Walking Man" was part of a splashy 2001 Rodin exhibition put on by the MacLaren at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Unfortunately, the continued on page 12 West practice with Egan LLP and an alliance with tax law firm Couzin Taylor LLP. PwC has affiliated tax law firm Wilson & Partners LLP. It's all a sign of accounting firms "making serious noise" about expand- ing their services, according to Furlong, who notes the recent moves mark the beginning of a full-scale entrance into the legal industry. The professional ser- vice firms' growing range of services to the same client base law firms are tar- geting should be a wake-up call to the legal industry. "The main strategic dif- ference I have seen between law firms and accounting firms is that law firms have always marginalized or restricted themselves in terms of the narrowness and the focus of their offer," he says. "Accounting firms don't do that, and that's why, in a lot of ways, this is not a fair fight. From a business perspective, legal services are just one part." Law firms can, if they choose, offer business services as well, he adds, noting even Deloitte's acquisition of ATD is a lost opportunity for the legal industry. For ATD, Deloitte's interest is a validation of a practice that's only at a nascent stage in Canada. While outsourcing document review or due- diligence tasks to overseas operations is common, there were few companies that did the work locally when ATD launched its practice. "It was a model that was seen worldwide but not in Canada before I started ATD. There are a few players but not anywhere near the scale we see it in the broader world," says Shelby Austin, founder of ATD. "People weren't sure such a concept could work, that it could exist. Now a company like Deloitte has gotten involved in providing additional sup- port to law firms and Canadian cor- porations. It certainly suggests that the idea itself is a good one for law firms and their clients as well." — YAMrI tADDese yamri.taddese@thomsonreuters.com Shelby Austin says there is room for more players offering legal services.

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