Michael Giordano

Michael Giordano is a Toronto personal injury lawyer and founding partner of Avanessy Giordano LLP, a boutique firm he co-founded in 2015 after making partner at a prominent personal injury practice. He and partner Aline Avanessy both came out of large, high-volume firms — and both left for the same reason. They keep a deliberately conservative file load so that clients deal directly with their lawyer, not a rotating cast of file handlers.

Michael studied English and Law & Society at York University, where he was a scholarship recipient and earned the Governor General's Academic Medal, before completing his law degree at the University of Ottawa.

His practice is focused on wrongful death, motorcycle accidents, and serious injury litigation — brain and spinal cord injuries, concussion, and catastrophic impairment claims. He has appeared as lead counsel in judge-alone and jury trials in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, successfully argued numerous contested motions, and obtained notable decisions before the Licence Appeal Tribunal and the Financial Services Tribunal.

The results speak for themselves. In Muccilli v. Morris (2025), Michael ran a two-week jury trial as lead counsel with twelve witnesses, causation and damages both in dispute, and won judgment for the plaintiff that exceeded his pre-trial offer — followed by a costs award of $400,807.91. In Chambers v. Remnant Tabernacle (2022) he defeated a summary judgment motion by an occupier denying liability for an ice and snow fall, on a record that included cross-examinations on eleven affidavits, producing a decision now cited on standard of care and what qualifies as a reasonable system of maintenance. He also argued and won Zarebicki v. Walmart (2016), a lengthy summary judgment motion on liability and standard of care for a slip and fall in a store.

His peers have taken notice. Michael received the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association's Martin Wunder, Q.C. Outstanding New Lawyer Award in 2017 and the OTLA Distinguished Service Award in 2023, both peer-reviewed. He was elected Chair of OTLA's New Lawyers' Division in 2017, voted onto the Board of Directors in 2018, and in 2023 elected to his final three-year term with an appointment to the Executive Committee. He chaired the OTLA Spring Conference in 2021 and again in 2025, has presented at conferences on striking the jury, standard of care, litigation loans, and civility in the profession, and was invited by faculty to serve as an Expert in Osgoode Hall's Intensive Trial Advocacy Workshop in 2025.

Michael also writes and teaches. He has authored articles for The Litigator, co-authored FSRA submissions and pre-budget submissions to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, been featured in Law Times, and co-chairs the OTLA Cup, an annual moot competition among Ontario law schools built around advocacy and litigation skills.

The community work runs deeper than most bios suggest. Michael received the North York Urban Hero Award in 2015, and the Toronto District Catholic School Board created a namesake award in his honour — the Michael Giordano Award of Excellence — given each year to two high school students who have achieved through adversity and shown leadership and social justice commitment. He hosts the annual Helmets on Kids program, sponsors the Brain Injury Society of Toronto, and donates regularly to Canadian Blood Services.

Michael's dedication to this work is personal. He has first-hand experience of what it means to lose someone to another's negligence, and it is why he built his practice around families going through it.

He is a member of the Law Society of Ontario, the Ontario Bar Association, and the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, and serves clients in English and conversational Italian. Outside the office he is a recreational boxer, a motorcyclist, a rugby player, and a camper, and spends the rest of his time with his family.

Consultations at Avanessy Giordano LLP are free, and the firm works on contingency.