Law Times

SKEPTICAL EYE CBA FUTURES Association calls on lawyers to innovate P7 Anti-SLAPP bill has its downsides L aw TIMes Follow LAW TIMES on www.twitter.com/lawtimes $4.00 • Vol. 24, No. 21 P5 FOCUS ON P8 Family Law NOW INCLUDES Collaborative Separation Agreement 1.800.653.0925 | www.divorcemate.com CO V E R I N G O N TA R I O ' S L E G A L S C E N E • W W W. L AW T I M E S N E W S . CO M June 17, 2013 ntitled-1 1 OPSEU accuses province of contempt 13-02-06 8:53 A Union challenging MAG over new independent body for transcripts BY MARG. BRuINEMAN For Law Times T he Ontario Public Service Employees Union is taking the province to court over its failure to abide by a ruling involving court interpreters as the government gets set to create a new body that would oversee their work as independent contractors. The new process will create a division between salaried court reporters overseeing the recording of trials and independent contractors performing the resulting transcription work. The move, according to OPSEU, flies in the face of a recent Grievance Settlement Board decision. In response, the union, which represents 650 court reporters, has filed an application with the Superior Court asking to have the Ministry of the Attorney General found in contempt. Under the new scheme, court reporters working for the government will oversee in-court digital recordings of the proceedings. Contracted court transcriptionists on a panel list overseen by an independent body will then take over. Some court reporters are happy with the new arrangement. "I am relieved to finally be getting some answers after seven years of not knowing that for sure," says Tricia Rudy, who has been working for the ministry as a court reporter in Newmarket, Ont., since 2006. "I'm thrilled that the ministry recognises that the reporter of record is and always has been in the best position to produce an accurate transcript and will still be offering us the option to continue working as ministry employees and to also be grandparented onto the approved list for independent transcription." The position has been something of a hybrid. While in court documenting proceedings, Rudy works as an employee. But as a transcriber of those proceedings, she's an independent businesswoman with an incorporated business that keeps her very busy. Next January, contractors regulated by an independent administrative body will produce all certified transcripts for Ontario's criminal, civil, and family court systems. The change will take the work outside of the OPSEU bargaining unit. The government will create the independent body to administer transcript production and maintain a publicly accessible list of court transcriptionists. The province's move 'flies in the face of the arbitrator's ruling,' says Jim Jurens. "The ministry researched the court reporting and transcript production models in place in other jurisdictions across Canada and the United States, the technology currently available, and the unique needs of a jurisdiction as large and complex as Ontario," said Ministry of the Attorney General spokesman Jason Gennaro. "The proposed framework is consistent with the proven approach in most other provinces and many international jurisdictions." "It's going to be the same basic product and Photo: Robin Kuniski service. It's going to be done in a different way," says Joanne Hardie, president of the Court Reporters' Association of Ontario. "If the integrity of the record is to continue to be  preserved at the highest possible standard for the  people of this province to be properly served, and for the profession of court reporting to remain the same, those fundamental goals will only be successful if we accept the change." The province offered existing court reporters See Long-standing, page 4 Man suing lawyers fights vexatious litigant ruling Law Times I The Ontario Court of Appeal has reserved its decision on William Malamas' appeal of the vexatious litigant finding. n the last two decades, William Malamas has sued dozens of parties, many of them lawyers, in numerous actions. Now, as he appeals a Superior Court judge's order declaring him a vexatious litigant, the former real estate developer says the justice system has failed him. "The system has failed me miserably," he says as he sits outside the Ontario Court of Appeal following arguments last week challenging a June 2012 decision barring him from bringing any more applications. He lugs a box carrying several thick binders that include his affidavits. During the June 11 hearing, appeal court Justice John Laskin made a remark about the length of Malamas' claim but assured him that the court had read it all. In the last 20 years, the now self-represented litigant has spent more than $1 million in legal costs, he tells Law Times. "In the end, I couldn't keep it up. That's why now I'm doing this alone." Malamas' long legal saga began some time in the early 1980s when he was the landlord of a Danforth Avenue property in Toronto that had the National Bank of Greece as its tenant. He would later lose his property when the recession hit and his mortgage exceeded the value of the property. In his developer days, Malamas got into a dispute with the occupant bank and sued it for rent arrears and damages for breach of the lease. In the coming years, he sued virtually all of the lawyers who represented him in that litigation and other cases he came to be involved in. According to court documents, Malamas argues the lawyers "developed an attitude of increasing malice" toward him during their representation of him. The law firms named in various lawsuits over the years, some of which no longer exist, include McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Toome Laar & Bell, Raphael Professional Corp., Goodman and Carr LLP, PM #40762529 BY YAMRI TADDESE See Phone, page 4 ONTARIO LAWYER'S PHONE BOOK 2013 YOUR MOST COMPLETE DIRECTORY OF ONTARIO LAWYERS, LAW FIRMS, JUDGES AND COURTS More detail and a wider scope of legal contact information for Ontario than any other source: 26,000 lawyers 9,000 law firms and corporate offices OLPB_LT_Feb11_13.indd 1 Visit carswell.com or call 1.800.387.5164 for a 30-day no-risk evaluation 13-02-06 12:58 PM

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