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regional wrap-up EIGHT YEARS WAIT TO BE PAID ON NORTEL FILE T here is rarely quick compensation, if any at all, for lawyers who special- ize in class action lawsuits. A trio of Montreal law firms that invested thou- sands of hours, worth millions of dollars in fees, for handling a pair of class actions against Nortel Networks Corp. spoke with Canadian Lawyer about their experience. At the end of May, Quebec Superior Court Justice Michèle Monast ruled those firms would split $3 million for their work. "We wanted and hoped for more, but in the context, we're happy to finally get paid," says Daniel Belleau, an associate at Belleau Lapointe. "We started working on that case eight years ago without being remunerated that whole time." The firms had sought more than twice that amount, a total of $6.7 million based on the hours billed over the years at a rate of .45 per cent of the eventual settlement for the Quebec class members. A host of class actions had been filed against Nortel in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and New York that were sub- sequently grouped into two files: Nortel I that covered those who owned shares from October 2000 to February 2001 and Nortel II for people who bought shares between April 2003 and April 2004. Nortel I, whose Quebec plain- tiff was the provincial Association for the Protection of Quebec Savers and Investors, was handled jointly by Belleau Lapointe and Unterberg Labelle Lebeau. Nortel II included Montreal investor Clifford Skarstedt as the lead Quebec plaintiff who was represented by Trudel & Johnston. Both files were globally set- tled in 2006 for a combined $2.3 billion with $101 million of that going to Quebec shareholders. While the Nortel I firms accepted the payment for their work, Trudel & Johnston appealed Monast's ruling. "We're disappointed," concedes Bruce Johnston, pointing to his Ontario coun- terparts who were paid $5 million three years ago "for doing exactly the same thing we did." François Lebeau of Unterberg Labelle Lebeau acknowledges lawyers who tackle class actions assume the biggest risks. "Other lawyers get paid monthly for everything for doing similar work to ours," he says. "If we don't win, we get nothing even though we've invested time and money." Lebeau points out the Nortel class actions were exceptionally risky because if a settlement hadn't been reached before the former telecommunications giant went bankrupt this year, shareholders and their lawyers alike would have lost and received nothing. — MK ThE PRAIRIES Business disputes mediated by an experienced CA Helping you get better results for your clients Bone hunter digs up prehistoric crocodile I As a chartered accountant with more than three decades of experience consulting on complex business matters, Joel Cohen can help mediate fair and effective resolutions to numerous complex business disputes. t: 416.932.6216 | e: jcohen@rsmrichter.com www.rsmrichter.com Toronto | Montreal | Calgary RSM Richter is an independent member rm of RSM International, an afliation of independent accounting and consulting rms. 8 OC T O BER 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com ntitled-1 1 5/22/09 11:40:22 AM f Chris Tait had been in the same spot in Dauphin, Man., 90 million years ago, he would have been running for his life, not starting to dig a hole. The lawyer at Legal Aid Manitoba, who moonlights as an amateur paleontologist, discovered the remains of a pre- historic crocodile during a recent fossil hunt. "It's a once-in-a- lifetime find," says Tait. "It's the best thing that I've ever found. I've found shark teeth and pliosaur bones but nothing quite as important or as complete as this." Pliosaurs were marine lizards — not dinosaurs — of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Tait happened upon the fossilized legs, backbones, and scales of the crocodile while extracting a fossil fish from a riverbank. He then dug down eight feet to get them out. He says what makes the find particularly unusual is that crocodiles were more of a shore animal and northern Manitoba, at the time, was cov- ered almost entirely by water. "There might have been an island or a reef that we didn't know about. Or the carcass could have drifted in from the western inland sea," he says. Tait speculates that the rest of the crocodile's body could have been eaten by sharks, rotted away as it floated through the water, or washed away by the river.