Bennett Jones
Christine Viney maintains a commercial litigation practice focussing on insurance and professional negligence matters, as well as energy-related and product liability disputes.
Christine's practice has a particular emphasis on insurance related litigation. She regularly advises on coverage matters and has litigated claims involving virtually every type of insurance policy, including commercial general liability, errors and omissions, directors' and officers' liability, builder's risk/course of construction, life and disability, property and automobile, as well as related products including performance and surety bonds. Christine brings the underlying industry knowledge she gained through her previous employment with a major national property and casualty insurer to the insurance-related litigation she conducts. In addition, Christine has been the instructor for Insurance Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary for the past seven years.
In the professional negligence area, she defends engineers, lawyers and physicians and prosecutes claims against engineers, insurance agents/brokers and other professionals. In addition, Christine assists physicians with conduct issues before the College of Physicians and Surgeons and in other professional administrative proceedings.
Christine has also litigated a wide variety of energy-related claims, including major pipeline failures, disputes related to contractual arrangements including purchase-and-sale and service agreements and land access agreements and claims alleging negligence in the design, construction and installation of energy facilities and technology infrastructure.
On the products liability side, Christine has prosecuted and defended claims involving a broad range of goods and services, including turbines, pipelines, construction projects and medical and other consumer products.
In connection with these claims, Christine has appeared at all levels of Court in Alberta, as well as in the Courts of Queen's Bench of Saskatchewan and Manitoba and the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, and has been involved in a variety of international arbitration proceedings.
In addition to teaching Insurance Law, Christine remains actively involved in the University's Trial Advocacy program and the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court program. In addition, she is Vice-President of the Canadian Bar Association Calgary Health Section (South).
Christine received a number of awards in law school, including the William A. McGillivray Gold Medal.