Western Law team wins Hicks Cup

March 26, 2012

HicksA Western Law team has won the Hicks Morley Labour Arbitration Competition. Law students Ed O'Dwyer and Tori Crawford (pictured left) secured the Hicks Cup on Friday, March 23 in Toronto.

The annual labour competition features winners of internal Hicks Moot competitions at Queens, Ottawa, Windsor and Western. This is the first Hicks Cup win for Western Law in five years, after winning the Cup in the first two years of the competition. 

"The Hicks Cup has become a prestigious labour law mooting competition among Ontario law schools, and I'm very proud of Ed's and Tori's victory,” said Professor Michael Lynk, the team’s faculty advisor. “They argued a very complex and difficult case with confidence and depth, and they have added to the great labour law tradition here at Western law."

This year's moot problem was based on an appeal of the February 2012 decision by the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench in R v Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, 2012 SKQB 62 (CanLII), where the Court had ruled that s.2(d) of the Charter includes a constitutionally protected right to strike, and went on to strike down parts of Saskatchewan's recent essential services legislation.

O’Dwyer and Crawford argued on appeal for the Government of Saskatchewan, and won in the preliminary round and again in the final round over the team from Queen's. 

Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP, Canada’s largest firm specializing in labour law, runs the competition.  The firm has offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, London and Waterloo.