Law Times

Page 16 May 30, 2016 • Law TiMes www.lawtimesnews.com LAWPRO PRESIDENT HONOURED WITH REAL ESTATE AWARD Kathleen Waters is the recipi- ent of the Ontario Bar Associa- tion's 2016 Award of Excellence in Real Estate, and will receive the award June 22 at the Albany Club of Toronto. "Kathie has been a relentless and passionate volunteer for dec- ades. She has served on the OBA Real Property Section and vari- ous committees for many years and has spoken at far too many professional development pro- grams to mention. Every lawyer practising real estate today is in her debt," says Timothy Kennedy, the OBA's Real Property Section Chair, in an OBA announcement. "She has worked to promote the value lawyers provide to the public and improve the knowledge of what it is that we do. We as profession- als are fortunate to have a colleague of the [calibre] of Kathie Waters." Waters, a former partner with Torkin Manes Cohen & Arbus LLP, has been at LawPRO since 2008, when she was appointed to the role of president and CEO. ALLIANCE ANNOUNCED Heuristica Discovery Coun- sel and KPMG have an- nounced they will work togeth- er on e-discovery services. "The Heuristica-KPMG in- tegrated model is designed to deliver efficient and cost effect- ive solutions to law firms and their clients, corporations and public bodies for managing discovery and investigations requirements," said a news re- lease on the Heuristica web site. More information is available at http://www.heuristica.ca/ insights-ideas/ JUSTICE ROSALIE ABELLA HONOURED Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada has received the distinction of an honorary Doctor of Laws from Yale University. Abella's experience includes her role as the commissioner of the Royal Commission on Equal- ity in Employment, and with the Ontario Family Court and the Court of Appeal for Ontario, be- fore she was appointed to the Su- preme Court. "Justice Abella is dedicated to the education of young lawyers and jurists and the advancement of diversity in the legal profession. She has served as a visiting profes- sor at McGill University and was responsible for organizing the first judicial seminar in which all levels of the judiciary participated, the first national education program for administrative tribunals, and the first national conference for Canada's female judges. She has written more than 80 articles and written or co-edited four books," according to a biography on Yale's web site. Abella was one of nine people recognized with honorary degrees at Yale's commencement. LAW TIMES POLL 50 % YES, I AGREE 50 % NO, I DO NOT AGREE Law Times reported recently that there are currently nine judicial vacancies slowing down Ontario's courts — seven in the Superior Court, one in the Court of Appeal, and one in Family Court. Readers were asked if this was personally affecting their practice. About 50 per cent of re- spondents indicated yes, the va- cancies affected their practice, and it was a source of frustration due to long wait times. Another 50 per cent indicat- ed the vacancies were not af- fecting their practice, and that while they commiserated with their colleagues, it had no effect on them. LT u Bizarre Briefs By Viola James u The InsIde story "Just a sec! We're still sending the data report on what you were doing last night" LawPRO president and CEO Kathleen Waters is the recipient of the OBA's 2016 Award of Excellence in Real Estate. OF PIZZA (CRIME) AND PUNISHMENT LISBON, Portugal — Saddled with back taxes and other debts, an Italian restaurateur in Por- tugal left the pizzas aside, took a plastic replica pistol, and held up a dozen banks to pay the tax man, court officials and local media reported. The Sicily-born 36-year-old who owned two struggling pizza joints has confessed to the robberies, which netted some 100,000 eu- ros ($145,555), a court official said. He goes to court this week along with another Italian man, 55, accused of being his accomplice. The pair, who did not resort to actual vio- lence and avoided speaking during holdups to conceal their accents, gesturing instead, were caught after robbing a bank in the town of Vi- seu last September. Police say they found the stolen cash, gloves, and fake guns in the restaurateur's car. The official at the court in Matosinhos, near Porto, would not comment on the man's tax affairs, but the Jornal de Noticias newspaper quoted a lawyer for the accused as saying that "the defence has joined to the case many re- ceipts for payments made around the time of the robberies." It said the crimes allowed the man to settle a large part of tens of thousands of euros of un- paid taxes and other debts such as motorway fees and his children's school fees. CYBER-RIDICULOUS DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A woman was fined and ordered to be deported from the United Arab Emirates for breaching her hus- band's privacy by checking his cellphone to see if he was cheating on her, Gulf News reported. The unnamed Arab expatriate was fined the equivalent of more than $69,000 by the crimi- nal court in the emirate of Ajman, the English- language newspaper said. Her lawyer told the paper she had accused her husband of having an affair. She admitted she had accessed his phone without his permission and transferred photos to her device, the lawyer added. The husband lodged a complaint with the court, which convicted her recently under a cybercrime law that penalizes "the invasion of privacy of another person" using information technology, the paper said. It said the husband and wife were in their 30s, but it gave no other information. DON'T DRINK AT WORK DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — The president of Tanzania has fired his home affairs minister after he turned up to parliament and answered questions while under the inf luence of alcohol. President John Magufuli, who took office in November, has promised to tackle corruption and inefficiency in government. He has fired several senior officials for graft and cut spending he deemed wasteful, such as scrapping official Christmas cards. Charles Kitwanga is the first minister to be fired since the cabinet's appointment. Analysts said his firing came as a surprise as he was widely viewed as being close to Magufuli. The presidential State House said in a state- ment that Kitwanga was fired after he "turned up drunk to parliament and responded to a question directed to the Ministry of Home Af- fairs while being in a drunken state." It did not say when the episode took place. Government red tape and official corrup- tion have often been blamed by businesses for slowing down or deterring investment in the poor African nation, which has discovered off- shore gas reserves it is seeking to develop. Magufuli has said he would impose disci- pline on the civil service and public institu- tions. LT 40 issuesH`LHYJV]LYPUN6U[HYPV»ZSLNHSSHUKZJHWL FREEKPNP[HSLKP[PVUHUK\USPTP[LKVUSPULHJJLZZ[VWHZ[PZZ\LZ FREECanadian Legal NewswireH^LLRS`LUL^ZSL[[LYMYVT[OLLKP[VYZVMLaw TimesHUKCanadian Lawyer Juror ruling prompts call to look at Criminal Code BY TALI FOLKINS Law Times ith the Ontario Court of Appeal having ruled on jurors' use of extrinsic informa- tion in a recent case, the president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association says it may be necessary to amend the Criminal Code in order to get a better handle on the issue. "You can't say if jurors are or are not doing this at any level that is ap- preciable because you only find out in the rare case where a juror hap- pens to mention something," says Anthony Moustacalis. "Maybe jurors really do obey the judge's instructions. In my experi- ence, it seems that they generally do. But do I really know? The an- swer is no. Maybe they're Googling stuff all the time." The only way to know for sure and assess the necessity of any changes to the jury system, accord- ing to Moustacalis, is to amend the Criminal Code to allow research- ers to interview jury members anonymously about their experi- ences. "The fact of the matter is that people are people and they might not always remember the limits of what they're allowed to do or they might stray," he says. The comments follow the ap- peal court's ruling in R. v. Farinacci, a case that demonstrated the ease with which jurors can now find information about the defendant outside of the evidence presented during the trial. In their ruling on June 3, a panel of three judges re- fused to overturn the convictions of two brothers for possession of the proceeds of crime and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine. The brothers, Lucas Farinacci and Leonard Fari- nacci Jr., had argued their right to a fair trial had been compromised because jurors in the case, with the help of Google and other sources, had come across information about them that hadn't come up in court. The appeal came about as a result of a chance event at a coffee shop. Prior to sentencing but after the brothers' conviction, someone at the coffee shop overheard one of the ju- rors, in a conversation with a friend, mention that another me mber of Zero-tolerance conundrum Lawyers say pendulum has swung too far against accused in domestic violence cases BY TALI FOLKINS Law Times he justice system has taken the idea of zero toler- ance in domestic assault to such an extreme that it's unfair to defendants and no longer works in the best interests of Ontario families, says a 40- year veteran of criminal law. It's an opinion, however, vociferously opposed by at least one lawyer who helps victims of domestic violence. Leo Adler, of Adler Bytensky Prutschi Shikhman, says the issue of domestic assault has become "political football" over the last 25 to 30 years with largely undesirable results. While Adler emphasizes he doesn't want to diminish the tragedy of family violence, he says the situation has now reached a point where police called to family violence situa- tions are unduly afraid to release the defendant even in cases that don't appear serious. "Nobody wants to be the person who says, 'O.K., I'm going to release you,' because you might be the one in a million or whatever the statistic is who might end up killing your spouse," says Adler. "In a lot of these cases, there's no sign of violence, there's no sign of anything having occurred. You simply have the word of the complainant. And the person gets arrested and I can tell you that again in the majority of cases, the police don't even bother to try to take a statement from the accused, usually the male. . . . They don't ask because it doesn't make a difference because they're going to arrest you no matter what." Bail hearings in domestic violence cases, he says, are "a l- ways run on the presumption of guilt" and, if the court does grant bail, it's generally under strict conditions with the de- fendant required to live with a surety. The result, according to Adler, is often a divided family with the added financial strain OBA LAUDED Association honoured for mental-health efforts P4 CAMPAIGN SPENDING Bencher candidate calls for expense limits P6 FOCUS ON Legal Innovation 'In a lot of these cases, there's no sign of violence, there's no sign of anything having occurred,' says Leo Adler. Photo: Robin Kuniski See Silence, page 2 See Bail, page 2 There's no way to know if jurors are doing their own research on cases, says Anthony Moustacalis. PM #40762529 & $#&!& t7PM/P Follow LAW TIMES on www.twitter.com/lawtimes L AW TIMES T W Juror ruling prompts call to look at Criminal Code BY TALI FOLKINS Law Times ith the Ontario Court of Appeal having ruled on jurors' use of extrinsic informa- tion in a recent case, the president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association says it may be necessary to amend the Criminal Code in order to get a better handle on the issue. "You can't say if jurors are or are not doing this at any level that is ap- preciable because you only find out in the rare case where a juror hap- pens to mention something," says Anthony Moustacalis. "Maybe jurors really do obey the judge's instructions. In my experi- ence, it seems that they generally do. But do I really know? The an- swer is no. Maybe they're Googling stuff all the time." The only way to know for sure and assess the necessity of any changes to the jury system, accord- ing to Moustacalis, is to amend the Criminal Code to allow research- ers to interview jury members anonymously about their experi- ences. "The fact of the matter is that people are people and they might not always remember the limits of what they're allowed to do or they might stray," he says. The comments follow the ap- peal court's ruling in R. v. Farinacci, a case that demonstrated the ease with which jurors can now find information about the defendant outside of the evidence presented during the trial. In their ruling on June 3, a panel of three judges re- fused to overturn the convictions of two brothers for possession of the proceeds of crime and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine. The brothers, Lucas Farinacci and Leonard Fari- nacci Jr., had argued their right to a fair trial had been compromised because jurors in the case, with the help of Google and other sources, had come across information about them that hadn't come up in court. The appeal came about as a result of a chance event at a coffee shop. Prior to sentencing but after the brothers' conviction, someone at the coffee shop overheard one of the ju- rors, in a conversation with a friend, mention that another me mber of Zero-tolerance conundrum Lawyers say pendulum has swung too far against accused in domestic violence cases BY TALI FOLKINS Law Times he justice system has taken the idea of zero toler- ance in domestic assault to such an extreme that it's unfair to defendants and no longer works in the best interests of Ontario families, says a 40- year veteran of criminal law. It's an opinion, however, vociferously opposed by at least one lawyer who helps victims of domestic violence. Leo Adler, of Adler Bytensky Prutschi Shikhman, says the issue of domestic assault has become "political football" over the last 25 to 30 years with largely undesirable results. While Adler emphasizes he doesn't want to diminish the tragedy of family violence, he says the situation has now reached a point where police called to family violence situa- tions are unduly afraid to release the defendant even in cases that don't appear serious. "Nobody wants to be the person who says, 'O.K., I'm going to release you,' because you might be the one in a million or whatever the statistic is who might end up killing your spouse," says Adler. "In a lot of these cases, there's no sign of violence, there's no sign of anything having occurred. You simply have the word of the complainant. And the person gets arrested and I can tell you that again in the majority of cases, the police don't even bother to try to take a statement from the accused, usually the male. . . . They don't ask because it doesn't make a difference because they're going to arrest you no matter what." Bail hearings in domestic violence cases, he says, are "a l- ways run on the presumption of guilt" and, if the court does grant bail, it's generally under strict conditions with the de- fendant required to live with a surety. The result, according to Adler, is often a divided family with the added financial strain OBA LAUDED Association honoured for mental-health efforts P4 CAMPAIGN SPENDING Bencher candidate calls for expense limits P6 FOCUS ON Legal Innovation P8 'In a lot of these cases, there's no sign of violence, there's no sign of anything having occurred,' says Leo Adler. Photo: Robin Kuniski See Silence, page 2 See Bail, page 2 There's no way to know if jurors are doing their own research on cases, says Anthony Moustacalis. PM #40762529 & $#&!&jmmm$cYa[bbWh$Yec t7PM/P +VOF Follow LAW TIMES on www.twitter.com/lawtimes L AW TIMES T W Subscribe to Law Times today for $199* and receive: *HUSH^`LYSH^[PTLZ'[OVTZVUYL\[LYZJVTc c (JJLZZHMYLLWYL]PL^H[!IP[S`JVTLawTimes-FreePreview 6YKLYVUSPULH[!^^^SH^[PTLZUL^ZJVTZ\IZJYPIL *Plus applicable taxes How the legal community in Ontario gets its news 'lawtimes Untitled-4 1 2016-04-27 3:52 PM

• Cover