Law Times

Follow on www.twitter.com/lawtimes $4.00 • Vol. 22, No. 2 Untitled-3 1 5/5/10 3:55:30 PM Inside This Issue 3 Duelling Lawyers 6 Feminized Justice 9 Focus On Real Estate Law Quote of the week "It's not how you draft the agreement but what you should be thinking about when you negotiate the agreement. There are so many details that have to be addressed that many lawyers don't know about." — Jeffrey Schwartz, Schwartz & Schwartz Professional Corp., See Addressing, page 11 Covering Ontario's Legal Scene ntitled-3 1 Billions of dollars invested, not a penny lost. January 17, 2011 5/4/10 2:49:21 PM Tallying the G20's legal costs From reviews to civil suits, summit continues to tax Canadians BY MICHAEL McKIERNAN Law Times M ore than six months after the last world leader jetted out of fortress Toronto, the impact of the G20 summit continues to reverberate across the city and the country, including the fi nancial cost of the various legal proceedings and re- views that have resulted. With a slew of reports, inquiries, reviews, class actions, criminal trials, and civil actions underway or still to come, the legal bills are threatening to add signifi cantly to the famous billion-dollar security price tag. Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, con- tinues to press for a single public inquiry into police actions that would consolidate at least some of the public probes. She insists it's not too late to save money. "When you have a multi-force policing ef- fort, we ought to have had one public inquiry that has powers to compel testimony," she says. "It's suffi ciently complex that a public inquiry would have been the cheaper and more com- prehensive route. I think it would still be a cheaper route, but we're still working with all the inquiries that are taking place." Th e CCLA is close to releasing its own report on G20 policing and public accountability after it held hearings in November. Des Rosiers says it's also planning a book on the summit in addi- tion to making submissions to most of the pub- lic inquiries underway. One of the few proceedings yet to hear from the CCLA is the Toronto Police Services John Morden is billing $480 per hour for his review, while other members of his team are working on a sliding scale. Board's independent civilian review led by former associate chief justice John Morden. Based at the offi ces of his fi rm, Heenan Blaikie LLP, Morden will make non-binding recommendations after tackling 35 ques- tions posed by the review's terms of reference about the board's role in planning and lead- ing the G20 security eff ort. Th e review was only supposed to take 12 weeks when it was announced in July. But by the time of Morden's selection, the deadline had become much more vague with no spe- cifi c budget for the review. Morden has been instructed to deliver monthly invoices while working at a rate of $480 per hour with other members of the small team remunerated on a sliding scale. Only the fi rst month's bill of $24,000 is publicly available so far, but the board is expected to approve additional costs at its next meeting in February. Review counsel Ryan Teschner says there are four phases to the process: background research, document review, interviews, and report writing. After four months, he notes the team is just beginning the document review phase but he can't say when it'll be ready to hear from witnesses. "We understand this review is being con- ducted with public money, so we are working hard to be as effi cient and eff ective as possible and to make sure there is no overlap and no duplication of eff orts," Teschner says. Former chief justice and Gowling Lafl eur Henderson LLP counsel Roy McMurtry has clearly cut the provincial government a deal for his review of the so-called secret law under the Public Works Protection Act. He's working at a bargain rate of $300 per hour. Joe Kim, spokesman for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, won't say how much the review has spent so far. "We want to provide one fi nal tally once the report is submit- ted," he says. Th at's expected in April, he adds. Ontario ombudsman André Marin conduct- ed his own review of the act using his offi ce's See Police, page 5 ent who made defamatory com- ments about his criminal record and disciplinary history in news- paper advertisements and on web sites following a fee dispute. Leigh Daboll, who runs his Niagara lawyer wins $50K libel suit against former client A BY MICHAEL McKIERNAN Law Times Pelham, Ont., lawyer has won a $50,000 libel judg- ment against a former cli- dominated nearly a year of my life. "I don't know whether I can say I'm pleased yet with the deci- sion. Th e more appropriate word is relieved. I represented this guy for two months. Seven or eight years later, I'm still dealing with this stuff ." Mark DeMarco was referred to practice out of his home in the Niagara Region, hopes the case will serve as a "cautionary tale" to young lawyers. "I can't over- emphasize how careful you need to be about who you represent, especially for new lawyers just starting out," he says. "You must screen your clients very carefully to avoid this kind of situation from occurring, which in my case Daboll in 2003 for matrimonial litigation with his estranged spouse, but the retainer ended soon after. A lengthy assessment process initially reduced the account that was worth less than $4,000 before a review by the court reversed the decision and made a costs award against De- Marco. In November 2008, Daboll fi nally collected on that judgment with a writ of execution and seizure satisfi ed by the proceeds from a property sold by DeMarco. Soon after, advertisements began appearing in local news- papers under the title "Lawyer Crime Ontario." Th e same ads appeared on dirtylawyer.com and lawsocietiesreform.com, two web sites run by DeMarco. Th e ads referred to Daboll's 2003 convic- tion for criminal harassment and fi ndings of misconduct by the Law Society of Upper Canada. In 1996, an LSUC panel repri- manded Daboll over fi ndings that he had fabricated a subpoena to witness. In 2003, he spent 65 days in pretrial custody before pleading guilty to criminal harassment of a woman who had previously been in a relationship with him. He re- ceived three years' probation, while the law society suspended him for 30 days. It also ordered him to pay costs and get counselling. In 2006, the LSUC suspend- ed him again, this time for two months, after a panel found he was in a confl ict of interest by having a personal relationship with the es- tranged wife of a client while repre- senting him against her in a family law proceeding. In his decision dated Jan. 4, On- tario Superior Court Justice Rich- ard Lococo said DeMarco couldn't rely on the defence of truth for his comments. "Individual fragments of the ad- vertisement arguably had some ba- sis in fact but they were expressed and juxtaposed in a manner that I fi nd to be inconsistent with the truth," Lococo wrote. "Th e clear implication of the advertisement is that at the time it appeared in the newspapers and/or the websites See Ruling, page 5 FEEDS LEGAL LegalFeeds_Cl_Jan_11.indd 1 A daily blog of visit www.lawtimesnews.com Canadian Legal News 1/6/11 11:44:49 AM canadianlaw yermag.com/ legalfeeds

• Cover
• Duelling Lawyers
• Feminized Justice
• Focus On Real Estate Law