David G. Coles, KC  

About David

David is a Partner and a member of the Business Litigation team. His practice areas include Defamation, Business Litigation, Civil Litigation, Estate Litigation and Media Law.

David represents a number of institutional clients including Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV, Community Newspapers Association, Royal Bank of Canada, The Coast and Grant Thornton. He has appeared on appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada on four separate occasions and participated in over 250 reported cases. David appears regularly in the Supreme Courts and Courts of Appeal of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

David received his King’s Counsel (formally Queen’s Counsel) appointment in 2005. In November 2011, David was named as the Representative for Nova Scotia on the Atlantic Regional Committee for the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute and in 2019, he was appointed Atlantic Canada Chair. He was named Best Lawyers’ 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2021 Halifax Defamation and Media Law “Lawyer of the Year” and has been included in The Best Lawyers in Canada every year since 2006. In 2014 and again in 2016, David was a finalist in the Benchmark Canada awards for “Litigator of the Year” in the Atlantic Provinces. In every year since 2020, David has been recognized by Benchmark Canada as an Atlantic Provinces Litigation Star. David continues to appear in the Lexpert Guide to the Leading US/Canada Cross Border Litigation Lawyers, as well as the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory. In 2019, he was appointed to serve as a member of the Nova Scotia College of Nursing (NSCN) Registration and Licensing Review Committee and Professional Conduct Committee. Also in 2019, David was selected as a fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America (LCA), recognized for his excellence and accomplishments in litigation.

Recently, through a series of Court hearings, David obtained the release of the search warrant information in respect to the Oland homicide investigation in New Brunswick, and as well obtained release of the video and other exhibits in the sentencing hearing of Mr. Bourque who killed three RCMP officers in New Brunswick.

David's Background