Chernos Flaherty Svonkin LLP

About Chernos Flaherty Svonkin LLP

Chernos Flaherty Svonkin LLP is a commercial litigation firm based in downtown Toronto, with its office on Bay Street. It's named for founding partners David Chernos, Patrick Flaherty, and Stuart Svonkin, who worked together at Torys LLP before starting their own firm. Chernos and Flaherty each spent more than twenty years at Torys and were both called to the Ontario bar in 1993. Svonkin, who holds a PhD from Columbia and a JD from Harvard, spent over a decade at Torys, including six years as a partner, and was called to the bar in Massachusetts in 1999 and in Ontario in 2003.

The firm's lawyers handle corporate and commercial litigation, including shareholder and oppression disputes, insolvency, professional liability, insurance coverage, estates litigation, and arbitration. Counsel Tycho Manson, a former journalist who later worked in house at a Canadian media company on libel matters, focuses on defamation and media law, a niche not every commercial litigation practice in the city covers. Partner Brendan Brammall, who is bilingual, clerked for Justice Ian Binnie at the Supreme Court of Canada and worked at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York before joining the firm. Several lawyers at the firm also teach; Patrick Flaherty and Andrew Finkelstein have both lectured in Osgoode Hall Law School's LLM program on the protection of intangible business interests.