James H. Bennett

About James H. Bennett

James H. Bennett, who goes by Jamie, is senior counsel at Bennett Grant LLP in Kitchener and has been settling claims and disputes for more than 40 years. Jamie's civil litigation practice is wide ranging, but its core is defending liability insurers, who bring Jamie in as preferred counsel when professionals, municipalities or police officers are sued. Peers took note in 2018, when the Waterloo Region Law Association presented Jamie with its Coulter A. Osborne Award, which honours a member's integrity, comity and beneficence in practice and in public life.

Cambridge is home turf: Jamie was born and grew up there, and while Jamie now lives as well as works in Kitchener, family life stayed tied to Cambridge, where the children went to school. Jamie articled at the firm in 1979 and became a partner in 1984. Alongside private practice, Jamie serves as a Deputy Judge of the Small Claims Court, part of the Ontario Superior Court.

Cases have gone as far as the Supreme Court of Canada, with stops at the Superior Court of Justice, the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal for Ontario along the way. In 2022 Jamie appeared for the Region of Waterloo at the hearing of its Superior Court application to evict residents of an encampment on regionally owned land in downtown Kitchener.

Jamie is a certified mediator and an arbitrator with a long record in family, estate, commercial and insurance matters, and has lectured for audiences as varied as the Waterloo District School Board, Conestoga College, Wilfrid Laurier University and the Advocates' Society.