James Turnbull was appointed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2005. He originally presided in Simcoe Ontario until he was appointed the Regional Senior Judge for the Central South Region in 2012. He retired from the court after sixteen years of service in 2021 and immediately began his private practice in mediation and arbitration as Turnbull Resolutions based in Hamilton but providing service across the entire province.
In over 32 years as a trial lawyer, James Turnbull gained a wide breadth of experience in various areas of law including commercial, employment, contracts, construction liens, condominiums, estates and personal injury cases.
In his role as a Regional Senior Justice, he case managed the civil “long trials” list which included handling motions, settlement conferences, procedural issues and all interlocutory proceedings required to get these difficult and complicated cases settled or tried as quickly as possible.
James Turnbull has attended and completed the one week Harvard Mediation program. In 2020, Jim successfully completed the “Gold Standard” arbitration course offered by the Toronto Commercial Arbitration Society and has received the designation of Q. Arb from the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Canada (ADRIC).
As a trial judge, he has presided over hundreds of cases on motions or at trial in virtually every area of law. He describes his time as a judge as being akin to being in law school for sixteen years because virtually every case has required listening carefully to the parties and the lawyers, reading the law on the issues in dispute, applying it to the facts and then writing a ruling.