Law Times

REGIONAL VARIANCE Task force finds different opinions on articling P2 Follow on www.twitter.com/lawtimes $4.00 • Vol. 23, No. 8 Untitled-3 1 CLASS ACTIONS Are they trying to do too much? P7 FOCUS ON Immigration Law COVERING ONTARIO'S LEGAL SCENE • WWW.LAWTIMESNEWS.COM L AW TIMES 5/5/10 3:55:30 PM ntitled-3 1 BY KENNETH JACKSON For Law Times the missing funds. Luc Barrick — or Luc Messin, as he was recently calling A himself — appeared briefly last month as the president of the Ashbury School of English, a language school in Paris. When contacted by e-mail on Feb. 8, Barrick didn't respond. Hours later, the web site ashbury.fr was shut down. Barrick first made the news last summer after he disap- peared and left a trail of upset clients and mystery in his wake. Clients claimed he owed them at least $300,000 that was sup- posed to be in trust. To date, they've recovered only a fraction of that money. Barrick said he was going to France, where he holds citizenship, due to an illness. He failed to return to Canada as promised by May 15. In a statement, Barrick said he wasn't able to return to Ottawa as scheduled because his health problems were too severe. He denied doing anything wrong with his clients' money. "Apparently, there is an allegation that trust moneys have been misappropriated by myself in the amount of $300,000," said Barrick. "This is simply untrue and a complete falsehood. Let me be perfectly clear, notwithstanding my serious health situa- tion, which was beyond my control, I did take all responsible and reasonable steps regarding the dissolution of my firm before going on indefinite sick leave." A screen capture saved from the Ashbury School of English web site indicates what Luc Barrick, identified here as Luc Messin, has been up to in France. Barrick suffered complications from knee surgery related to his hemophilia. He's a law graduate from the common law program at the University of Ottawa. As for the money, he said selling an Ottawa condo would allow clients to recover the missing money. That property at 324 Laurier Ave. in Ottawa went up for sale at $469,000. In the meantime, the LSUC obtained a court order See Situation, page 5 missing Ottawa lawyer resurfaced briefly under a new name in Paris last month while many of his former clients still wait to get their money back as efforts by the Law Society of Upper Canada have recovered only a small portion of P9 Billions of dollars invested, not a penny lost. March 5, 2012 5/4/10 2:49:21 PM Lawyer's clients out of luck Luc Barrick resurfaces at Paris language school as condo nets just $52K BY KENDYL SEBESTA Law Times Chris MacLeod. As a young child in the 1970s, C MacLeod's parents heard their son likely wouldn't live past the age of six. Th e Cambridge LLP partner was born with cystic fi brosis, a chronic disease passed down through fami- lies that causes thick mucus to build in the lungs and other areas of the body. While mucus is necessary for the body's organs to function normally, two defective genes inherited from two unaff ected parents can cause the body to produce abnormally thick onstant congestion and thick, laboured breath- ing often prompted wary looks towards amounts of it. If the mucus builds up in the breathing passages of the lungs and in the pancreas, it can lead to life-threatening infections and seri- ous digestive problems, particularly in young children. MacLeod compares the disease to "having a bit of a cold all the time." "It tends to aff ect the lungs and digestive system until they break, and that's really where it does the most damage to people" says Ma- cLeod. "I was born with it and man- aged to work through some of the more diffi cult aspects of it. Now it's all systems go." Growing up, MacLeod and chil- dren like him were oſt en encouraged to be active and spend nearly a third of their waking hours in therapy to combat the disease. For children with more severe digestive issues, the disease also meant swallowing nearly 30 pills each time they sat down to a meal with their family. Other treatments for children with cystic fi brosis oſt en included physiotherapy to open the lungs and antibiotics to combat infec- tions. More recently, they've also in- cluded the addition of a high-fat diet to combat the weight loss that oſt en occurs when children with cystic fi - brosis aren't able to absorb all of the nutrients from the foods they eat, notes Katherine Blake, a campaign and major giſt specialist at Cystic Fi- brosis Canada. "Chris is really ahead of the curve when it comes to staying on top of cystic fi brosis," says Blake. "When he was born, his parents would have been told he would probably only 'The sooner we find a cure, the better, and I think we're just around the corner,' says Chris MacLeod. live to be fi ve or six years old and then as medicine progressed, possi- bly to 26 or 27 in the 1980s. Now, the See Lawyer, page 5 FEEDS LEGAL LegalFeeds_Cl_Jan_11.indd 1 A daily blog of visit www.lawtimesnews.com 1/6/11 11:44:49 AM Canadian Legal News canadianlaw yermag.com/ legalfeeds T oronto lawyers to suit up for CF cure PM #40762529

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