David M. Porter
TITLE
PartnerAREA OF EXPERTISE
Appellate LitigationLitigation
Professional Liability
White Collar Defence and Investigations
University of Toronto
BAR ADMISSION
Ontario, 1983Mr. Porter has appeared as counsel on numerous criminal trials in the Superior Court of Justice and appeals in criminal matters in the Ontario Court of Appeal. He has acted for the Criminal Lawyers’ Association (Ontario) in the Supreme Court of Canada. He has also been engaged in both prosecuting and defending professionals before disciplinary tribunals. Mr. Porter has frequently appeared as trial and appellate counsel for self-regulating professional colleges in Ontario.
Since 2006, Mr. Porter has been recognized in Best Lawyers in Canada as a leading practitioner in criminal defence.
Mr. Porter has been recognized as an international leader in the defence of white collar criminal cases in the International Who’s Who of Business Crime Defence Lawyers 2010, and in the Who’s Who Legal Directory for 2010 in the list of outstanding counsel in the area of business crime defence. In 2014, he was recognized in the International Who’s Who of Investigations Lawyers, which stated that "his abilities in the sector are ‘internationally renowned’."
Mr. Porter is a member of the National Executive of the Criminal Justice Subsection of the Canadian Bar Association, and sits as the Canadian Bar Association member on the "Steering Committee on Justice Efficiencies and Access to the Justice System", a national committee of judges, Crown counsel and defence counsel. He is the Law Society of Upper Canada representative on the Ontario Judicial Council.
From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Porter was a member of the adjunct faculty of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where he taught trial advocacy, and he currently teaches the LLM course in Evidence at Osgoode Hall Law School.
Mr. Porter received his BA from Queen’s University, his MA from the University of Sussex (UK) and his LLB from the University of Toronto. Mr. Porter was called to the Ontario bar in 1983.
RECENT ACTIVITIES
- Mr. Porter was recently successful in his defence of the former CEO of Nortel in a lengthy fraud prosecution. The acquittal is reported as R. v. Dunn 2013 ONSC 137. In the course of the prosecution, judgment was received from Boswell, J. on December 31, 2009 in R. v. Dunn (2009) 251 C.C.C. (3d) 384 ordering the Crown to make its database of Crown disclosure fully searchable for the defence. The decision is a leading authority on electronic disclosure of voluminous documentation in criminal cases.
- In 2009, Mr. Porter obtained a new trial for his client, following a Crown appeal, in Regina v. Stucky 2009 ONCA 151. This case was a lengthy and complex prosecution by the Competition Bureau for misleading advertising.
- On December 24, 2010, Mr. Porter received the judgment acquitting his client in Regina v. De Zen et al, 2010 ONCJ 630, a lengthy fraud prosecution in which his client, the former CFO of Royal Group Technologies Limited, was acquitted of two counts of fraud.
- Mr. Porter was the lead author of "The Significance of Police Misconduct in the Analysis of s. 8 Charter Breaches and the Exclusion of Evidence under s. 24(2) in R. v. Grant, R. v. Harrison and R. v. Morelli" (2012), 58 The Criminal Law Quarterly, p.510.
- Mr. Porter frequently participates in numerous continuing education programs dealing with criminal law and professional discipline proceedings. Recently in Toronto and Calgary, he sat on a Lexpert panel to discuss the public corporation's response to a police investigation of the alleged corruption of a foreign public official.
- R. v. Nestle Canada Inc.: Settlement Privilege in Criminal Proceedings (May 11, 2015)
- R. v. Dunn, Beatty and Gollogly 2013 ONSC 137 – The Canadian Nortel Fraud Prosecution Results in Acquittals 6, IBA Criminal Law Section News, No. 1, March 2013, pp. 7-11
- Reasonable Expectations of Privacy in the Computer Age: A Brief Review of Regina v. Ward 2012 ONCA 660 and Regina v. Cole 2012 S.C.C. 53 (January 29, 2013)
- The Significance of Police Misconduct, and Misleading Testimony in the Analysis of the Seriousness of Charter Breaches: An Update (January 29, 2013)
