Law Times

Page 16 November 4, 2013 Law Times • u The u Bizarre Briefs InsIde story By Viola James MORTICIANS BUSTED FOR FUNERAL HOME KICKBACKS PESARO, Italy — It's not often you hear about a ring of allegedly corrupt morticians. According to Reuters, Italian police have arrested five morticians on charges of making tens of thousands of euros a month in bribes from funeral homes and profiting from grieving families of the dead. The morticians would tip off a favoured funeral home when a corpse arrived and take kickbacks from the cost of the burial ceremony, said Francesco Pastore, regional financial police chief in the central town of Pesaro. They reportedly made 10,000 euros a month each from the practice, Pastore said. Pastore said former employees of the hospital and town council of Pesaro also operated on bodies to remove pacemakers despite lacking the correct medical training. Investigators are probing whether the heartregulating devices were sold on the black market. "These pacemakers in theory should have been destroyed. But instead we are trying to discover what happened to them. It cannot be excluded that they were reused," Pastore said. Other accusations the morticians face include pocketing payments from families for preparing and dressing the dead rather than passing them on to the hospital, selling clothes, shoes, and rosary beads for the dead at inflated cost, and giving formaldehyde injections without the proper medical training. Authorities have put them under house arrest and charged 29 others, including doctors and funeral home owners, with crimes including fraud, embezzlement, and illegal medical practice. HERMIT GETS 'UNIQUE SENTENCE' AUGUSTA, Maine — What do you do with a hermit who stole peanut butter from people's homes while spending 27 years living in the woods with little contact with the outside world? That was one of the questions facing a Maine court after Christopher Knight pleaded guilty to burglary and theft. He entered the plea as part of a deal in which he'll receive mental health counseling to re-enter society. Judge Nancy Mills of the Maine Superior Court ordered Knight, 47, to check in weekly with the court to confirm he's either working full time, attend schooling or volunteering, and undergoing mental health counselling for a year to ensure a "successful" return to the community. "This is someone who has had no involvement with anybody for 27 years," Knight's lawyer, Walter McKee, said. "It's a very unique case, a very unique sentence for a very unique person." Knight said he walked into the woods in 1986 shortly after he heard about the Chernobyl nuclear accident and claims to have had little human contact since. According to Reuters, police arrested Knight in April after they caught him stealing food and supplies he needed to survive from a summer camp along North Pond, Maine. Gaunt and pale with a full beard, Knight listened quietly as Mills asked if he understood he'd have to tell his court-appointed case manager "the truth" in order to receive the best rehabilitation treatment possible. McKee said Knight poses no threat to society, but it was still unclear where he would reside upon release. "That's been the big issue since Day 1: Where is he going to go?" said McKee, who noted no one knew how Knight might respond to the everyday pressures of society. District attorney Maeghan Maloney said the agreement hinged on the nature of Knight's crimes. "He was stealing peanut butter. He was not stealing jewelry. And he did not at any point attack a human being. Those were top considerations," she said. Police say Knight committed as many as 1,000 burglaries in order to survive. LT "A tiny firefly in the vast, cosmic night! Kinda reminds me of my 1994 decision in Northville Auto v. Marco's Pizza. Upheld all the way to the Supreme Court!" OSGOODE LAW PROF REMEMBERED Osgoode Hall Law School professor Michael Mandel has died. Mandel died on Oct. 27, the law school announced. He was 65. Mandel taught law at Osgoode for 39 years. He lectured in areas including international criminal law, the law of war, and legal politics. Mandel, a graduate of Osgoode himself, also taught at the University of Michael Mandel Saskatchewan, McMaster University, the University of Toronto, and several Italian institutions. "Michael was a passionate individual; a dedicated teacher and a valued member of the faculty," the law school said in a press release. "He will truly be missed." One student described him as "witty and knowledgeable" on an online tribute. "Prof Mandel was undoubtedly the best instructor I had at law school," the student wrote. "His enthusiasm was contagious." The Toronto Star reported that Mandel died of a rare heart disease. LSUC FEES TO INCREASE BY $15 The Law Society of Upper Canada's 2014 budget outline shows lawyers will see their annual fees go up by $15 in the coming year. The increase will bring their annual fee to a total of $1,866. The law society will keep paralegals' annual fee unchanged at $996. Convocation approved the fees along with other budget changes for 2014. As part of its budget, the law society plans to spend about $8 million to revitalize its information systems over the next three years. Another significant item in the budget was a $500,000 allocation to build the new law practice program, a three-year pilot project that will serve as an alternative to articling. CHANGES TO CONDUCT RULES Convocation has adopted some tweaks to the Rules of Professional Conduct proposed by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. The proposals are an attempt to create more consistent rules across the country as the recently signed mobility agreement, once implemented, will allow lawyers to practise anywhere in Canada. The changes will come into effect in October 2014. The following are the more significant changes noted in a report prepared for Convocation: • There will be a new sentence added to the definition of conflict of interest. The addition, which is in line with the Supreme Court's decision in Canadian National Railway Co. v. McKercher LLP, says the risk of conflict "must be more than a mere possibility; there must be a genuine, serious risk to the duty of loyalty or to client representation arising from the retainer." • Lawyers can no longer accept testamentary gifts from clients whose will they're drafting unless they're also a family member. • If lawyers know or are ought to know that someone sent a piece of information regarding their work to them by mistake, the new rules require them to notify the sender. • Retired appellate judges who want to go back to law practice will have to wait three years before they can represent a client at the court on which they served. The current rules restrict retired judges from appearing before the very bench they sat on without prior approval but didn't include a set cooling-off period. POLL RESULTS The results of the latest Law Times poll are in. The majority of respondents think the Supreme Court of Canada got it right in its recent Cuthbertson v. Rasouli ruling. The court decided in that case that consent from family members is necessary in order to withdraw life-support treatment even when doctors believe continuing it is ultimately futile. About 76 per cent of respondents to the poll agreed. LT CANADIAN LAW LIST 2013 YOUR INSTANT CONNECTION TO CANADA'S LEGAL NETWORK Visit carswell.com or call 1.800.387.5164 for a 30-day no-risk evaluation Inside you will find: MORE THAN A PHONE BOOK Untitled-1 1 www.lawtimesnews.com 13-07-05 10:03 AM

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