One of several fires that burned almost 300 homes in Saskatchewan this spring. (Facebook/Jay Are En)

By Susan McNeil

Class action lawsuit

Over 100 people join webinar on potential class action lawsuit against province

Jul 9, 2025 | 3:54 PM

An online invitation to residents of Saskatchewan impacted by wildfire evacuations this year had over 100 attendants, said the lawyer who arranged the call.

Chad Eggerman, the founding partner of Procido Law, is confident the first two of the seven steps of a class action suit against the province have been satisfied.

“It’s already pretty clear to us that there’s a group that has suffered these damages, and it’s kind of what we expected,” he said.

“The recurring theme of just the total lack of resources and then some examples of negligence. This is not coming from me; this is what we’re hearing from third parties.”

The first step is to see if there is a group that has similar loss or harm, which becomes the class.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Catching up with Jeremy Harrison: What's next for power, internet in northwest Sask.

Aug 01, 2025

Tariffs

Saskatchewan exports still mostly tariff-free under CUSMA: Moe

Aug 01, 2025

Riderville

Unlike Figure Skating there are no points awarded in football for artistic impressions

Aug 01, 2025

“If there’s no class, there’s no class action lawsuit,” he explained. “There has to be some similarity in the losses and the losses need to emanate from a single entity.”

“Did we identify a class? We think so, absolutely, we think we have identified a class.”

Step two is to identify a representative plaintiff that represents the interests of the entire class.

Eggerman was expecting four or five people on the online information session and was taken aback by the level of response.

“The response is, again, I use this word overwhelming, but I’ve heard so many different stories,” he said.

Because of the volume of responses, he had to change his plan for the webinar. It would take about an hour to listen to each person’s response, something not feasible in a webinar, so it was changed to a more informational session to manage people’s expectations.

Eggerman reiterated that class action lawsuits can take years or decades to resolve, and it is likely that most of the recovery work will be done before anything is decided – if they even decide to move forward with the lawsuit.

“People’s expectations with the law, how slow it moves, we had to temper those. I think there was a lot of disappointment there with people expecting results sooner than will realistically happen.”

There is little incentive for government to settle the case sooner rather than later, he explained.

The third phase and where they are right now, is to study the law surrounding the case.

While they are already seeing some challenges ahead, the firm will make a decision on whether there will be a fourth step in the next week or so.

They have committed to responding to potential claimants by July 18 at 5 p.m. and will do so by email.

Cellphone service in the north has been restricted due to wildfires, which are ongoing.

—

susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: @susan.mcneil.bsky.social