Darcy William Romaine

Darcy Romaine is a trial lawyer for the seriously injured. He has won trials where liability is complex and where the injuries involve catastrophic brain injury, complicated orthopaedic injury, and severe burn injury. Professionally, he is best known for his trials involving municipal negligence and his courtroom efforts to have regulations governing municipality maintenance obligations struck for providing unsafe and inadequate levels of care to the motoring public.

Darcy has also acted as outside counsel on behalf of the Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee, representing those whose injuries render them incapable of making legal decisions. Notably, such cases include a successful 22-day trial against the Ontario Provincial Police, Pelletier v. Her Majesty the Queen , in which a cyclist was struck and rendered catastrophically injured by an O.P.P. cruiser. In the case of Youssef v. Redi-Mix Limited et al. , Darcy went to the Supreme Court of Canada to interpret the Residential Tenancies Act and a landlord’s negligent property management, which contributed to a tenant’s livestock escaping the property and catastrophically injuring a passing motorcyclist.

Darcy is a former director of the York Region Law Association and of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA). In 2015, he was selected as OTLA’s representative to review Ontario’s proposed Protocol for Traffic Injury Management, to question the research scientists who authored the protocol, and to make submissions to the provincial government. In 2023, Darcy was appointed by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and the Ministry of the Attorney General to the Civil Rules Committee and the Civil Rules Review Committee.

Darcy is also a frequent speaker at conferences concerning personal injury trial practice, focusing on municipal liability and trial conduct. He has presented at the Advocates’ Society, the Canadian Institute, the Law Society of Ontario, and has chaired and spoken at conferences with the Ontario Trial Lawyer’s Association. He has published numerous trade papers and articles on civil litigation and co-authored the chapter on municipal liability in the Oatley McLeish Guide to Personal Injury Practice in Motor Vehicle Cases.