Background law practice

John Judge is an Arbitrator and Barrister with Int-Arb Arbitrators, International Arbitration Centre, in London, England and a Resident Arbitrator and Mediator at Arbitration Place in Toronto, specializing in international and Canadian domestic arbitration.  He launched his independent practice as an arbitrator in 2013 after 35 years of counsel practice as a senior partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP in Toronto.  He became a founding Resident Member of Arbitration Place (Toronto) and also a Member Barrister at 39 Essex Chambers (London) for 7 years until 2020 when he joined Int-Arb Arbitrators.

Mr. Judge has over eighteen years of experience in international commercial arbitration as counsel and as arbitrator. He has sat as an arbitrator and as chair on many substantial international arbitrations through the International Chamber of Commerce, Paris, the London Court of International Arbitration, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (the international arm of the American Arbitration Association), SIAC (the Singapore International Arbitration Centre), the BCICAC (British Columbia International Commercial Arbitration Centre) as well as on substantial ad hoc arbitrations.  He has been appointed to the arbitration panels of the ICDR, SIAC and the KLRAC, now the Asian International Arbitration Centre. He has been appointed as arbitrator by states and state owned entities as well as by some of the largest mining and oil and gas companies in the world.  He has also sat as arbitrator on a wide variety of domestic arbitrations of commercial disputes including joint venture and shareholder disputes, construction and related insurance disputes, telecom disputes, gas royalty and lease rent rate disputes.  Mr. Judge has also acted as a mediator to assist parties in settling their disputes in a wide variety of cases. 

As counsel, he has appeared before trial and appellate courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, domestic and international arbitral tribunals as well as administrative tribunals including human rights tribunals. He has acted for and against government entities.  His recent counsel work has been restricted to court proceedings arising from the conduct of international arbitrations, including applications for the enforcement of ICSID awards and the setting aside of a significant NAFTA award. He is well versed in all forms of injunctive and pre-emptive interim remedies. As many of his cases involved international issues, he is adept in coordinating cross-border disputes and effectively dealing with jurisdictional issues. Many of his disputes involve issues of interpretation and application of complex contracts under the governing laws of various jurisdictions including England, New York, Texas, Kansas, France, Germany, Venezuela, Peru, Guatemala, Mozambique, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Singapore, in addition to the Federal and provincial jurisdictions in Canada.

His experience also includes shareholder and partnership disputes, corporate and commercial transactions, banking, insolvency, insurance and reinsurance claims, and civil fraud investigations and claims. He is experienced as arbitrator and counsel in large engineering and construction disputes and arbitrations ranging from complex industrial plants and facilities including sophisticated cogeneration and hydro-electric facilities, nuclear generation and waste disposal facilities, oil and gas facilities and pipelines, offshore drilling platforms, complex petrochemical plants including copolymer and aromatics plants, mines and gold milling plants, airport facilities, paper mills to air-separation plants, as well as commercial buildings and residential projects including condominium and apartment buildings. He has also handled related product liability and professional negligence disputes involving large industrial equipment in respect of performance guarantees, catastrophic failures causing significant damage and related insurance issues.

In the expanding technology area, he has handled a wide variety of technology disputes related to outsourcing, software development, licensing, software implementation, Internet and domain name issues.  His experience encompasses disputes over the purchase and sale of real estate, joint venture developments, mining properties including mining royalty disputes, commercial and industrial projects, mortgage enforcement and loan work-outs, receiverships and CCAA restructurings.

He has acted in investor-state disputes, having advised Canadian mining companies with respect to mines located in foreign states and has also acted for investors in the enforcement of international awards in Canadian courts.

Get in touch

Inquire about John’s arbitration services.
Write to John ▸

Legal Foundation