Andrew Monkhouse is the founder and senior lawyer at Monkhouse Law. He has argued before the Supreme Court of Canada, all levels of the Civil Court in Ontario, and the British Columbia Supreme Court.
Andrew is a civil litigator practicing in Employment Law, Long-Term Disability, and Class Actions. He has been the lead counsel on numerous notable employment law cases, including Paquette v. Terago (2015 ONSC 4932/2016 ONCA 618), Asgari v. 975866 (2015 ONSC 7508), Kurt v. Idera (2016 ONSC 3799), Johar v. Best Buy (2016 ONSC 6115), Ruston v. Keddco (2018 ONSC 2919/2019 ONCA 125), Menard v. CIGI (2019 ONSC 858), Joshi v. Allstate (2019 ONSC 4382), Nahum v. Honeycomb Hospitality (2021 ONSC 7546), Gracias v. Dr. Walt Dentistry (2022 ONSC 2967/2023 ONSC 2052), and Tan v. Stostac (2023 ONSC 2121).
Andrew acted as an intervenor at the Supreme Court of Canada for Uber Technologies v. Heller (2020 SCC 16) and Matthews v. Ocean Nutrition (2020 SCC 26).
As a pioneer in Employment Class actions, Andrew was co-counsel on the first Canadian class actions relating to employee/contractor misclassification (Sondhi v. Deloitte), variable compensation underpayment (Curtis v. Medcan), and bonus exemptions (Lee v. Allstate). Other notable class actions include those against RBC Insurance, Aviva, Approval Team, BMO, AE Hospitality, Pizza Hut, Procom, RBC Life Insurance, Solar Brokers, Spectrum Event Medical, TES Contract Services, VIB Event Staffing, Workforce, and the Ontario Government.
Andrew served as the Vice Chair and Chair of the Ontario Bar Association (OBA) Labour and Employment Section from 2020 to 2022, and as the Vice Chair of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) Labour and Employment Section from 2023 to 2024. He was also the founding President of the Employment Lawyers Association of Ontario (ELAO).
In 2023, Andrew received an Honorary Degree in Applied Studies from Humber College for his community works.
As the managing partner of Monkhouse Law, Andrew has received numerous business awards, including being recognized as the top-growing law firm in Canada in 2019 according to the Globe and Mail. In 2020, Monkhouse Law was recognized as the top-growing law firm in all of North America by the Financial Times and in Ontario by the Globe and Mail. Monkhouse Law has been selected as a finalist for “Labour & Employment Law Boutique of the Year” by the Canadian HR Awards four times (2018, 2019, 2020, 2023) and was the silver winner of the “University of Waterloo Award for Next Generation Employment Innovation” in 2020.
Since 2012, Andrew has been the convenor or co-convenor of the Osgoode Cup, Canada’s premier undergraduate mooting competition, which takes place at Osgoode Hall Law School and is Canada’s largest simultaneous mooting competition.
Andrew serves as the lead author of “Canadian Forms and Precedents – Commercial Transactions – Employment,” published by LexisNexis Canada. He is also a contributing author to CanLII’s guide to the Rules of Civil Procedure, specifically Pleadings, Rule 25 – Pleadings in Action.
Andrew’s research interests include Access to Justice, Employment Law, Civil Litigation, and Class Actions.