A Nova Scotia judge has ordered students to pay for “shocking” damage to a rental property he called a real life Animal House. “The landlord took the position the house was virtually destroyed,” wrote the Court.
Blacklock’s pauses for the August bank holiday with warmest regards to subscribers. We wish you a safe, happy holiday. We’re back tomorrow — The Editor.
I couldn’t fix
the leaking faucet
so I took a hard look
at my toolbox,
switched the places of the hammer
and the pliers,
moved the screwdriver
from the top deck
to the bottom,
threw away the rusty nails
and brought in a few shiny ones,
and finally,
released from duty a number of old bolts
and replaced them
with good-looking nuts.
I am camera-ready.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
In 1915 the president of the Canadian Bar Association called lawyers “children of light.” In 2015 Justice Edward Belobaba of Ontario Superior Court called lawyering “a self-regulated profession that continues to enjoy the benefits of a monopoly, including monopoly pricing.” Belobaba was angered by cost claims in a National Bank class action lawsuit in which barristers chocked up $1,000 an hour. “Access to justice for most litigants remains illusory mainly because of the high hourly rates charged by lawyers,” he wrote.
Here lies the tension in a profession deemed essential and contemptible all at the same time. If clients rarely hug their lawyers on the courthouse steps, most would agree society would be worse without them. The profession itself is capable of searing self-criticism, which brings us to Lawyers’ Empire by Professor W. Wesley Pue of the University of British Columbia’s law faculty.
Dr. Pue chronicles Swinfen v. Lord Chelmsford, a malpractice scandal from 1859. “High drama,” he calls it. “Had tickets been sold it would have been a scalper’s dream.” Patricia Swinfen, an English widow, sued her own lawyers for quietly cutting a deal in an estate settlement in breach of explicit instructions, then billing her for the privilege.
“The establishment view was that barristers’ public duties required that they enjoy authority to act without being subject to their clients’ command,” writes Pue; “The ideology of adversarial justice also held, however, that barristers were to be their clients’ champions, fiercely and without compromise advancing her position.”
Swinfen lost. The topic remains timely. Lawyers’ Empire chronicles this conflict between the ideal and practice of law.
From the 1850s English barristers were forbidden from advertising. Well into the 20th century the Canadian Bar Association frowned on purely for-profit practice. Yet when the Calgary Bar Association was founded in 1899 local barristers were preoccupied with fixing fees, regulating office hours and hounding unlicensed practitioners.
“Whereas professional rhetoric makes much of public service – sometimes elevating professional self-governance to the status of an entrenched constitutional right – the nitty-gritty of professional organization seems to have been self-interest,” writes Pue. “Their specific objectives were classic trade union stuff: money, work week and monopoly.”
This tension dates from the profession’s Victorian roots. “However lucrative successful barristers’ practices might be, the ideology of the Bar was intensely anti-commercial,” notes Lawyers’ Empire. “Founded on the notion that the best men would always come out well, it was considered ‘ungentlemanly’ to actively seek out legal work.”
Yes, but –
In 2017, Small Claims Court in Halifax cited a local barrister for charging $350 an hour in a routine traffic case. “Vulnerable clients will often sign whatever is put before them because they feel they have no choice,” wrote the Court.
In 2016 the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal criticized a local law firm for billing $95,528 in an uncomplicated workers’ compensation lawsuit. “When a client asks his lawyer the time of day he doesn’t need to be told how to build a watch,” said Justice John Mitchell.
Note both sharp criticisms were made by fellow lawyers. It is one of the profession’s best assets. So, too is Lawyers’ Empire. Carefully researched, it treats its subject in a plain-spoken manner any client would enjoy.
By Holly Doan
Lawyers’ Empire: Legal Professions and Cultural Authority, 1780-1950, by W. Wesley Pue; University of British Columbia Press; 516 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-33097; $75
Ratepayers will see higher costs for electricity, says a staff memo to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. The Department of Environment would not estimate how much more consumers and industry will pay for “green” electrification: “Expansion of clean electricity supply towards 2050 will increase costs.”
A federal judge has ordered the Correctional Service to pay $7,500 to a convicted murderer for breach of his Charter rights. Métis inmate Jeffrey Ewert complained prison staff touched his collection of feathers and arrowheads without permission: “Mr. Ewert’s medicine bundle is sacred to him.”
The British Columbia Supreme Court has ordered a contractor to pay $1.5 million for “a campaign of defamation” against a business rival. The award is one of the largest of its kind for internet libel in Canada: “People said if it’s written it must be true.”
China could have been fined $25,000 for flying a suspected spy balloon over Canada without a federal permit, according to a Department of Transport briefing note. The balloon instead was shot down by U.S. fighter jets last February 4 and recovered in the Atlantic off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: “Any individual that breaks these rules can be subject to fines.”
Canadian meteorologists yesterday blamed flood plain construction for higher damages from extreme weather. A federal panel has recommended Parliament withhold disaster aid from municipalities that allow waterfront construction: “There is no plan.”
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is exempt from Conflict Of Interest Act disclosures under a separation agreement. Mrs. Trudeau last year registered a new federal corporation to sell communications services: “Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is more than someone’s wife.”
A federal lab has confirmed Canada’s first known case of Covid-19 transmission from a deer to a human, says a government memo. The “rare case” occurred at an undisclosed location in Ontario: “The Public Health Agency of Canada has confirmed the human case is most likely a rare example of deer to human transmission.”
Cabinet yesterday blacklisted Academy Award-winning filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, star of Burnt By The Sun. Mikhalkov was among 18 Russians censured for supporting the war in Ukraine: “Russia is using its celebrities in the cultural sector to promote the Kremlin’s propaganda.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department yesterday gave grocers until month’s end to comment on proposed curbs on single-use plastics like meat wrapping and fruit bags. A current ban on plastic six-pack rings and other goods will cost consumers $205 million, by official estimate: “There is a need to do business differently.”
China represents a last chance for the commercial viability of the Atlantic seal hunt, says a federal memo. China banned sales of Canadian seal oil and other products in 2011: “Industry views access to China as one of its last opportunities for their industry to again become commercially viable.”
As many as half of all federal office buildings are unnecessary and could be sold at a taxpayers’ saving says the Department of Public Works, largest landowner in Canada. The selloff would take about 25 years, it said: “We are not going back to the way things used to be.”
