Heyla Vettyvel

Heyla Vettyvel is a commercial litigator in Gowling WLG's Toronto office. Her practice focuses on complex commercial disputes and arbitration, with a particular focus on real estate litigation.

Heyla acts for public and private companies, financial institutions, and other institutional clients in contractual and shareholder disputes, product liability matters, commercial leasing disputes, contaminated-land claims, and banking and enforcement litigation. She regularly takes primary carriage of matters and works directly with clients on strategy, with an emphasis on practical, commercially focused solutions.

Her experience includes successfully defending a nearly $1 billion International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration involving complex engineering and project-management claims, where she led the preparation of lay witness evidence, drafted key written advocacy, and managed a junior team through a documentary record exceeding 65 million documents. Her real estate litigation experience includes significant disputes involving environmental contamination, commercial leasing, and the enforcement of rights against real property. She has also independently obtained summary judgment for a financial institution defending a claim arising from the sale of secured real property, followed by security for costs and the dismissal of the subsequent appeal.

Heyla is active in the broader legal community. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Tamil Bar Association (TBA) and its Finance Committee and is the TBA President's Delegate to the Ontario Bar Association (OBA) Council for the 2026–2027 term. She previously served for two consecutive terms on the OBA Civil Litigation Section executive and on the Women's Law Forum executive and has been a moderator and speaker at OBA and Chartered Business Valuators Institute (CBV Institute) programs.