Kieran has more than 20 years' experience practicing insurance law, commercial and construction litigation and serving clients with general counsel needs.

He has successfully defended asbestos-related litigation, including the leading action in this area. He has also been counsel in major class actions against financial institutions, especially in cases involving claims arising from interest charges, tariff rates and standardized fees charged by lenders and service providers.

Kieran has acted in cases involving alleged misuse of client information and breach of restrictive covenants by former employees.

In the area of intellectual property, he has worked on matters that involve alleged trademark infringement and passing off by use of confusingly similar branding, and by handling of "grey market" or counterfeit goods. He is also a registered trademark agent in Canada and has worked on registrations in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and various South American countries.

Kieran is a founding Director and Past President of the Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada. He provides legal counsel to both the Association and many of its members, as well as to travel insurers and related parties in Canada and internationally.

Representative Client Work

• Defence counsel for W.R. Grace and Co. and its Canadian subsidiary in Canada's largest asbestos-related case, Privest Properties Ltd. v. W.R. Grace & Co. (1995), 11 BCLR (3d) 1 (SC); aff'd (1997), 31 BCLR (3d) 114 (CA); leave to appeal refused (SCC). This action involved 2 years of pretrial document collection and review, involving more than 1 million documents and a 2-year trial.  The successful defence of the Privest case marked the end of litigation in Canada related to the cost of removing asbestos from buildings.
• Kieran was centrally involved in Privest and a case involving the Bentall office towers in Vancouver. Both cases raised a variety of legal and factual issues, including complex corporate histories , attempts to 'pierce the corporate veil' of certain defendants, state of knowledge and assumption of risk defences, and technical issues regarding the existence and degree of risk in various circumstances and causation of loss.
• Successful counsel in the first class action against a major Canadian financial institution, Johnston v. Royal Bank of Canada. This case, based on overcharges of mortgage customers through complex miscalculations of interest, resulted in a payout of approximately $23 million to 65,000 class members across Canada.

Other matters Kieran has worked on include:

• Insurance: life, disability, fire, theft, travel
• Corporate/commercial: shareholder and partnership disputes, product liability
• Professional liability: disciplinary matters before regulators, negligence claims
• Real estate: commercial, residential strata corporation matters
• Maritime law: ship collisions, suppliers, international cargo claims, international sales agreements
• Pro bono work for charitable organizations re: civil liberties and estate litigation

Awards & Honours

• Gold Medallist, University of Victoria Faculty of Law, 1985
• Law Foundation of British Columbia Fellowship, 1986

Professional & Civic Activities

• Founding Director and Past President, Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada (THIA)
• Member, Board of Advisors (Legal Advisor), Wildlife Rescue Association of British Columbia
• Past Chairman, Canadian Bar Association, Civil Litigation subsection and media spokesperson.

Background

Kieran is a former Chairman of the Canadian Bar Association's Civil Litigation section in Vancouver. He is a widely published author and frequent speaker on legal issues, including damages, insurance, privacy law and constitutional matters. He also writes and speaks about the Canadian, American and international health insurance and health care systems.

Kieran has made presentations to insurance regulators in all Canadian provinces, has provided legal advice to the Attorneys-General of Texas, Wisconsin and Rhode Island, and has met with and lobbied Senators and Representatives in Washington DC in connection with international trade in prescription pharmaceuticals.