A London lawyer who’s led the fight for inmates’ rights and jail reform in Ontario is now fighting his former law firm.
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London’s McKenzie Lake law firm ended its partnership with Kevin Egan in February, about six months after receiving $9.3 million in a class-action suit developed by Egan’s work on Elgin-Middlesex Detention Center (EMDC) cases, according to court documents.
In a short affidavit, Egan says he paid a financial and personal price for years by bringing to the law firm and pushing forward the class-action lawsuit against the province of Ontario over conditions at London’s provincial jail.
The September 2023 settlement with the province was one of the firm’s biggest, Egan says in his affidavit. The settlement provides up to $33 million to be shared among up to 17,000 current and former EMDC inmates.
After taxes and disbursements, McKenzie Lake received $8.2 million in fees.
An original promise of a $3.4-million share for his work disappeared and a dispute began over payment, Egan says in his affidavit.
Out of the $8.2 million McKenzie Lake received, Egan says he’s been paid less than $40,000.
Amid a dispute over the class-action payments, he was suddenly expelled from the firm by email in February, Egan claims.
“After 28 years of practice at the same firm, the communication of a decision to expel me was shattering,” he says in his affidavit.
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At 69, he was forced to restart a practice and deal with more than 100 worried clients, many of them related to EMDC, he says.
“I’m concerned about my clients having been caught in the middle of a dispute that is not of their creation,” Egan said in an interview.
Many clients received an email from McKenzie Lake saying he had left the firm.
“It gives the clients the wrong idea, that I somehow left voluntarily and left them in the lurch,” he said.
That’s the only comment outside the application and supporting affidavit he will provide at the moment, Egan said.
He applied to the Superior Court of Justice in late July for an order to send the dispute to arbitration. The application also seeks a ruling ordering McKenzie Lake to provide him regular draws of money and set aside $3 million in credit reserves until the matter is settled.
The application and supporting affidavit contain claims not yet tested in court, and McKenzie Lake hasn’t had the opportunity to respond yet.
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“McKenzie Lake is aware of the existence of the application, but has not been served with it,” managing partner Matthew Villeneuve said in an email to The Free Press. “McKenzie Lake intends to firmly respond to the proceeding, but does not intend to comment further at this time while the matter is before the court.”
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McKenzie Lake’s partnership agreement is the legal heart of the matter.
In his application, Egan argues the partnership agreement requires mediation first, then arbitration in matters of disputes between partners, but McKenzie Lake refused to follow the procedure.
That might be a matter of little public interest were it not for the fact Egan has become a leading, if not the leading, advocate for jail reform in Ontario.
Much of his attention has focused on London’s troubled EMDC, where 24 inmates have died since 2009.
One of the first to die was Randy Drysdale, whose family Egan represented at a 2011 inquest where he successfully fought for a rare homicide verdict.
“The Randy Drysdale inquest highlighted for me that there existed very serious systemic, constitutional and social justice issues at EMDC that needed to be addressed,” Egan says in his court application.
Egan contacted The London Free Press after that inquest and growing media coverage prompted dozens, then hundreds of inmates to contact him.
By 2012, he realized the sheer volume of cases was more than he could manage on his own, and the next year he drafted and issued a statement of claim for a class action.
When the class action began and its time frame was extended twice, he gave up individual files over to the larger lawsuit, lessening his income, Egan says in his application.
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Egan’s practice works on contingency, meaning he doesn’t get paid until and unless his client’s case is successfully settled or tried in court.
The application before the court outlines what Egan says was his involvement in the class-action lawsuits, from interviewing potential clients, to bringing them into the fold, and being their contact person.
He also presented the opening address at mediation with the province, and played “a very active and effective role” in mediation and negotiations, the affidavit says.
Outside the class action, he continued to represent families at coroner’s inquests into inmates’ deaths and battle the province in civil cases, Egan notes in his affidavit.
The inquests “gave me a deeper understanding of the many issues and tensions at EMDC and left me better prepared for trial in the class action. All of the evidence I gathered from inmates and inquests confirmed for me that the conditions at EMDC were quite literally the stuff of nightmares,” his affidavit says.
In one civil case that went to trial, he obtained precedent-setting damages for violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that likely pushed the province into negotiations for the class action, and was cited in the court’s approval of the class action, Egan says in his affidavit.
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Success came with a personal price, he says.
“I have been on the front lines, listening to first-hand accounts, reviewing video evidence, responding to and litigating in regard to brutal murders, suicides, rapes, forced sodomy, compulsory fight competitions, extreme violence, slavery, overdose deaths, deaths from preventable disease, traumatic brain injuries, neglect, overcrowding, filth, staff cruelty, and other large-scale inhumanity, on a constant basis, day after day and year after year,” he says in his affidavit.
In that affidavit, Egan alleges he got no support or understanding from his peers at McKenzie Lake for his trouble and was told by one partner, “Don’t tell anyone. They’ll think you’re weak.”
Egan says in the affidavit he was told in fall 2022 he would receive credit for 33 per cent of the billing in the class action, and responded his time on the file was more than 50 per cent.
“The discussions aroused a concern in me as to whether there was any intention to treat me fairly,” he says.
That same year, McKenzie Lake had absorbed two other law firms and expenses were adding to the company debt, Egan says.
At partnership meetings, he began to believe firm management was focused on paying down the debt rather than paying him his share of the then-proposed settlement, Egan says.
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In March 2023, he agreed to a 42.5 per cent share to keep the peace and asked for a lump sum, or “carve out,” something done in a previous large class-action settlement at McKenzie Lake, Egan says.
There were also discussions and debate about previous and future payments.
The discussions with the firm’s managing partners led to a January meeting of the firm’s compensation committee, which ruled against a lump sum payment or addressing past accounting errors, Egan says in the affidavit.
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The committee then prepared calculations that Egan says in his affidavit would award him smaller portions of the firm’s profits than most other partners, based on their contributions.
The bottom line, over the next two years – before forced retirement – was he’d give up $2.4 million of the original $3.4-million lump sum, the affidavit says.
“I disputed the method and result as unfair and inequitable as well as being inconsistent with past practices when a big win was realized by a partner,” Egan says in his affidavit.
The class-action settlement was the “culmination and vindication” of his efforts,” he says.
“I believed in the merits and the societal importance of the work I was doing. I had no expectation that my previous partners would usurp my hard-won compensation,” he says in his affidavit.
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After the committee vote, in February 2024, he requested mediation in accordance with the partnership agreement, Egan says.
He faced pushback and “an attempt to intimidate me,” but insisted at a meeting with partners that a mediator was necessary, Egan says.
He told the partners “everyone around the table was in a conflict of interest – that the less they paid me, the more each of them would get,” the affidavit says.
After some discussions with a lawyer retained by McKenzie Lake for the dispute, he received an email Feb. 22 saying he was being removed as a partner “effective immediately” the affidavit says.
He’s had to adjourn matters because of delays since in getting access to client files and “frustration and fears for clients whose very important matters appear jeopardized.”
Despite some confusion, only three of 130 have decided to stay with McKenzie Lake rather than continue with him, Egan says.
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