Law Times

Law Times • sepTember 8, 2014 Page 5 www.lawtimesnews.com Allegations against LSUC counsel Should law society investigate its own? By yamri taddeSe Law Times lawyer facing mis- conduct proceedings at the Law Society of Upper Canada is ask- ing why the regulator won't in- vestigate its own counsel when there's a complaint against them. Recently, a lawyer accused of real estate fraud alleged the law society counsel tried to bribe a witness to testify against him. Another lawyer says an LSUC discipline counsel lied to a hear- ing panel when she suggested he had failed to produce docu- ments he had promised to hand over. Lawyer Tim Leahy has had run-ins with the law society for some time. On Sept. 1, he was to begin a suspension for failing to co-operate with the regulator's investigation. But Leahy says the regulator failed to investigate its own lawyer, Anne-Katherine Dionne, when he complained she had misled the panel. According to Leahy, Dionne told a hearing panel in July there was a transcribed telephone message between him and a law society investigator in which he agreed he would produce trust ledgers. "What?" says Leahy. "They don't exist. How could I ever have said I'd produce what I know doesn't exist? I thought, 'Did she really write that down?' because I would never say that." None of the allegations against Dionne have been prov- en and law society spokesman Roy Thomas noted the panel expressed no concern with her conduct when he raised it. When Leahy also filed a com- plaint against Dionne with the law society, he says it responded that it wouldn't investigate the matter and that he should have brought up the issue with the hearing panel. "Given the nature of your al- legations, the appropriate forum for you to raise your concerns is in your hearings process at the first instance rather than through the complaints pro- cess," wrote Zeynep Onen, ex- ecutive director of professional regulation, in a written response to Leahy's complaint. "I will therefore take no fur- ther action in response to your complaints at this time." In response to questions, Thomas confirmed the hearing is the place to raise such concerns. But Leahy says he's not in a position to prove to the panel that there had been professional misconduct without the law so- ciety's help because he doesn't have "the investigative power." "They said, 'You should bring that up with the hearing panels,' [but] how am I going to prove it? You [the law society] have the investigative power over your own people. You talk to them," he says. "They pursued complaints against me. Why won't they pursue a complaint against her [Dionne]?" he asks. Leahy's case isn't the only case where a lawyer facing a misconduct hearing has levelled allegations against the law soci- ety's counsel. On Aug. 28, an- other lawyer before a law society panel argued it should remove the regulator's counsel because he would be calling him to testi- fy for tampering with a witness. Counsel for Kumar Sriskan- da, a lawyer accused in relation to fraudulent real estate transac- tions, told the hearing panel it must remove the LSUC's coun- sel, Glenn Stuart, from the record because he allegedly offered an inducement to a witness. Sriskanda had fired his for- mer counsel for allegedly fail- ing to represent him. His new lawyer, Viresh Fernando, says his client's previous counsel had surreptitiously recorded an interview with a complain- ant in which she claimed Stu- art told her he would help her recover her money via the law society's client compensation fund if she testified against Sriskanda. The law society panel heard a motion for an interlocutory sus- pension of Sriskanda's licence despite his insistence that Stu- art shouldn't argue it. The panel agreed to hear Sriskanda's motion to remove Stuart in November. For his part, Stuart said the allegations are "completely groundless" and an attempt to delay the law society proceed- ings. He also said the panel couldn't possibly remove counsel from the record each time a law- yer facing a misconduct hearing alleges wrongdoing. "When something is said, it doesn't necessarily make it true," he noted. "To say I am a compellable witness doesn't matter if he can't show on the evidence that it's necessary." 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