Sometimes a right policy results in a wrong result. Most of the time — including in the case of convicted murderer/diagnosed PTSD sufferer Christopher Garnier — we are better off focusing on the right policy rather than on the occasional unexpected, unhappy wrong result of that policy. When I was a young freelance journalist, I […]
The judge and the complaints: finding the balance between judicial independence and public confidence
As the review committee’s decision demonstrates, we need to know more than can be communicated in a 140-character tweet before leaping off the ledge to firing-offence conclusions. The problem, too often, is that’s all reasonably informed people have to go on.
“In the Matter of Complaints Against Judge Gregory Lenehan, made pursuant to the Provincial Court Act, R.S.N.S. 1989, c. 238 …” If nothing else, last week’s decision by the review committee looking into allegations of “misogynistic reasoning” and “gender bias” by Nova Scotia Provincial Court Justice Gregory Lenehan inadvertently made a compelling argument for cameras...
霍恩案例:mumble-mouthed情话,粉-mouthed nobodies
Neither Capital Health nor the Nova Scotia Health Authority has ever publicly apologized to Horne for years of bullying and harassment, while successive provincial governments chose to look the other way, giving carte blanche to the health authority to hire hugely expensive, by-the-hour outside lawyers to bully Horne for more than a decade. And so it goes...
If you read only last week’s headlines — Appeal Court Slashes Damages Payout to Cardiologist Gabrielle Horne (Chronicle Herald); Halifax Cardiologist Sees Reduced Damages of $800K in Suit Against Health Authority: Nova Scotia Court of Appeal Rejects Appeal by Dr. Gabrielle Horne to also Sue for Breach of Contract (cbc.ca) — you might assume world...
A jury of whose peers?
The jury chose door number three — acquittal. From 4,000 kilometres and six provinces away, I find that incomprehensible. But that, at the end of the day, is not the key issue here.
Let’s start with this. Any jury might have acquitted Gerald Stanley, the 56-year-old white Saskatchewan farmer who shot and killed Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Indigenous man, on Stanley’s farm in August 2016. There are two competing narratives about what happened, and even more about the meaning of what happened. The Crown charged Stanley with second-degree...
Bar Society says Lyle Howe should be disbarred, ordered to pay $500,000
The bar society argues Howe should now suffer the ultimate legal punishment — not being allowed to practise the profession for which he trained — and also be shackled with a debt he may never be able to repay, in Catch-22 part because he is not allowed to practise his profession.
The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society wants Lyle Howe not only disbarred from practising law for at least five years, but it says he should also have to pay between $450-600,000 of the costs of the disciplinary hearing against him. The society estimates its total cost in the case at $1.1 million — a figure that...
Who’s going to fix our broken criminal justice system?
The panel’s perhaps self-evident but nonetheless shocking admission: there are only a “limited number of people” — almost all of them with “substantial social and financial resources” — who can hire lawyers who have the time and resources to represent them fully and adequately in the criminal justice system.
“The evidence has therefore made it clear to us that it can be unfair to expect that a brass knuckle possession, or breach of recognizance, or theft-under file for a repeat offender currently in custody being dealt with on a legal aid certificate will have the same level of file management and documentation as the...
The Lyle Howe case: guilty, but…
值得称赞的是,面板没有回避implications of the fact the bar society was “seeking formal discipline against a member of the African Nova Scotian community.” But then what?
The CBC headline — “Halifax Lawyer Lyle Howe Found Guilty of Professional Misconduct, Incompetence” — was simple. And it is accurate. So far as it goes. But the actual 140-page decision by a bar society disciplinary panel… IN THE MATTER OF: The Legal Profession Act, S.N.S. 2004, c. 28 and the Regulations of the Nova...
Lyle Howe and the bar society’s Plan B
If the panel hearing the professional misconduct charges against Howe decides he is guilty of any, some, or all of the original seven charges against him, he could be disbarred. If, on the other hand, the panel decides he isn’t guilty of all — or most — of those charges... well, what then?
If you fear you might not succeed on your first try, you should have a Plan B already neatly tucked in your back pocket. In advance. Just in case. That would seem to be the way the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is now approaching “IN THE MATTER OF the Legal Profession Act and the Nova...
The judge and the child abuse registry case: common sense among the Catch-22s
What was especially interesting to me were the times when Justice MacDonald stepped outside the usual boundaries of case law and legalese in order to offer a personal human reflection on a case that is all too human.
During a week filled with chemical attacks and cruise missile strikes in Syria, and a government’s cynical, Saul-like conversion to compassion on the way to an election closer to home, we must savour any small spark of common sense where we can find it. I found mine reading “Court Watch,” law student Christina Macdonald’s...
The Lyle Howe case: ‘If you look hard enough…’
There are parallels between what's happening to Lyle Howe and what happened nearly 50 years ago to a Shubenacadie doctor named Ross McInnis.
When I was a young CBC reporter back in the 1970s, I got a tip from a source inside the department of health that the RCMP was investigating a Shubenacadie doctor named Ross McInnis for MSI fraud. I didn’t realize it at first, but I would later discover it was the first health care fraud...