Claudie Fréchette is a lawyer in the Litigation and Dispute Resolution group at our Montréal office. She is a passionate and versatile lawyer, who is recognized for her professional thoroughness and commitment to defending her clients’ rights, often in complex, high-profile cases.
Claudie provides invaluable insight into litigation involving federal, provincial or municipal governments, particularly in judicial reviews of actions, decisions, and legislative or regulatory provisions. She regularly acts in cases involving the validity of impugned measures, where obtaining a stay order until final judgment is crucial.
She has extensive experience in obtaining injunctions and extraordinary remedies, such as Anton Piller, Mareva and Norwich orders. Claudie also acts for clients in matters involving non-competition, non-solicitation, unfair competition and the misappropriation of confidential information.
Since her practice covers a wide range of legal matters, she also acts in commercial and contractual disputes, business litigation, shareholder disputes and class actions.
Claudie has represented client such as :
- McGill University in its legal challenge of the policies established by the Minister of Higher Education regarding francization requirements and tuition fees for students outside Québec;
- the Conseil de la magistrature (Québec’s judicial council) and the Chief Justices of the Court of Québec in several major constitutional and administrative law cases related to the protection of judicial independence, including:
- the application for judicial review concerning the validity of certain selection notices that did not include an English proficiency requirement contrary to the needs expressed by the Chief Justices of the Court of Québec;
- the application for judicial review challenging the validity of Bill 96 provisions amending the selection procedure of candidates for the office of judge of the Court of Québec and municipal court judge;
- the Court of Appeal Reference regarding the decision to reduce the number of days that judges of the Criminal and Penal Division sit in court;
- the application for judicial review and the application for a stay or proceedings of the Attorney General of Québec with respect to said decision to reduce the number of days that judges of the Criminal and Penal Division sit in court;
- Canadian Pacific Railway Company regarding the rail blockade in support of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation that marked Canada in February 2020;
- Transat in the class action brought against airlines for the reimbursement of airline tickets cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic;
- Transat in its victory against Groupe Mach before the Financial Markets Administrative Tribunal.
Claudie completed a Bachelor of Laws (Co-op Program) at the Université of Sherbrooke. She figured on the Dean’s List each year of her studies and received the Canadian Interuniversity Sport Association’s (CIS) Canadian Academic All-Star Award. She also completed the JD in North American Common Law program of the Université de Montréal.
Claudie has legal work experience at both the national and international levels, gained through three internships completed in corporate legal departments: one for a federal Crown corporation in Montréal and two for a multinational transportation company in Zürich, Switzerland.
She has also completed two corporate secondments, gaining invaluable experience in the business landscape and honing her practical understanding of clients’ needs and strategic objectives.
