Canada

Accuser of Porn-Posing Canadian Judge Gets Fired

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We don’t normally cross international borders to find judges to write about; there are enough colorful characters in the U.S. judiciary. But when the jurist in question has appeared in pornography that made its way on to the interwebs, we make an exception.

There are some updates in the tale of Madam Justice Lori Douglas, the Canadian judge who appeared in nude photos showing Her Honor engaging in bondage, playing with sex toys and performing oral sex. We previously “exposed” the story here and here.

The first one is an amusing yet cautionary tale. Just because your porn features a judicial angel in the centerfold doesn’t mean it’s not porn — and, as such, inappropriate to keep on your work computer.

This is a lesson that Alex Chapman, the man who has filed ethics complaint and civil lawsuits against Justice Douglas and her husband, prominent divorce lawyer Jack King, learned the hard way….

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Porn-Posing Canadian Judge Puts Away the Gavel — For Now

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Yesterday we wrote about Madam Justice Lori Douglas, a Canadian judge in Manitoba who, in her pre-robescent days, apparently posed for nude pictures — while engaged in such activities as bondage, sex toy play, and oral sex. These photographs apparently made their way on to an interracial porn website called DarkCavern.com (without Douglas’s knowledge or consent, according to her husband — who claims he posted the pics during a bout with depression).

The pictures came to light when an ethics complaint was filed against Justice Douglas and her husband, matrimonial lawyer Jack King. A former client of King, an African-Canadian gentleman by the name of Alex Chapman, claims that King sexually harassed him by showing him the porn pics of Lori Douglas and encouraging him (Chapman) to have sexual relations with Douglas. According to Chapman, King suffers not just from depression but from “Jungle Fever”: he is titillated by African-Canadian men getting it on with white women.

Justice Douglas did not comment to CBC News, which broke the story. But she has taken other action in the wake of the scandal….

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Judge of the Day: Oh, Oh, Oh… Canada!

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Up in Canada, judges have no problem with cameras in the courtroom. As Canadian Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin explained in a recent discussion with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Canada’s high court has had cameras in the courtroom for over 20 years, and they haven’t caused any problems. [FN1]

Some Canadian judges don’t have a problem with cameras outside the courtroom, either. As reported by CBC News, naked photographs of a senior judge from Canada engaging in bondage, playing with sex toys and performing oral sex were previously posted on the internet. These nude pictures are now part of ethics complaints filed in July against the judge, Lori Douglas, associate chief justice of Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench, and her husband, Winnipeg family lawyer Jack King.

And the pics are just the tip of the iceberg. The complainant, a 44-year-old computer specialist named Alexander Chapman, claims that Jack King, Chapman’s lawyer at the time, sexually harassed Chapman by pressuring him to have sex with King’s wife, Lori Douglas (still a lawyer at the time).

So… many… questions. Let’s learn more — plus ogle a bigger and better photo of Madam Justice Douglas….

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Toronto Associate Finds Creative Way to Look Like He Belongs

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Associates are under a lot of pressure these days. But we applaud those junior lawyers who respond to the current demands with initiative and creativity. We found just such an associate in Toronto.

The man’s problems seem trivial to the outside world. His office is crappy. He needs an upgrade, but not because he wants to feel like he’s some hotshot. He just knows that he has to look like a hotshot in order to generate business. This is how he explains it on a Craigslist post:

I work in a large Bay Street law firm. Many of my partners and clients have extensive collections of original artwork. As a struggling associate with a mortgage, no job security and a wife with a penchant for running into things with our car, I cannot afford to buy original artwork myself, so I appear low-rent to the higher-ups. Given the high standards of my clients and partners, I also cannot go out and buy prints or copies of original art – I will be laughed into the unemployment line.

A lot of associates would have noted the problem and left it at that. Maybe they would have gone home crying to their mothers about life’s unfairness. But not this kid…

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Here’s One Way To Get A Big Bonus From Your Firm

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Michelle Marie Danicek

Sometimes law firm outings can get pretty crazy. It seems like this is especially true in Canada. Who would have thought, eh?

Last month, we wrote about a bottles-and-models party in Toronto that led to one associate losing his Canadian cookies in a cab, and a partner allegedly grinding (inappropriately) on female associates. Maybe those ladies just needed thicker skins or, in that case, booties?

Meanwhile, as we mentioned briefly this morning, a female lawyer in Vancouver did not have a thick enough head. In 2001, Michelle Marie Danicek, then 32, was a law clerk at Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Lang LLP. According to the Vancouver Sun, in April 2001 she went out dancing at the Bar None nightclub, after a firm-sponsored associates’ dinner at an oyster house.

As many of you know, lawyers are not always the best dancers. The lawyers got their grooves on, and one of Danicek’s fellow maladroit associates stumbled into her, perhaps while he was doing the “running man” (that seems Canadian).

This caused her to fall to the ground — and sustain a $6 million injury….

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Partner of the Day, Eh: Canadian Lawyer Sues Two of His Former Associates

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David Cowling, Mathews, Dinsdale & Clarke partner and alleged booty dancer

Sometimes law firm after-hours parties get pretty wild. The Great Recession didn’t put a damper on one Toronto firm’s celebrations last year. In January 2009, Mathews, Dinsdale & Clarke threw a rager in honor of its annual labour law “moot” competition for Canadian law students. (We mentioned this story briefly in yesterday’s Non-Sequiturs.)

After awards were given out at a dinner, the lawyerly crew headed to Toronto night club Cheval, for bottle service and dancing. Things got a little crazy. One senior associate got so hammered that “he left the club without his coat or keys and vomited in the taxi cab as it left the club.” And one partner, David Cowling, allegedly got too friendly with some of the female associates while grinding on the dance floor.

Two associates complained about his behavior to other partners, and now Cowling is suing the two associates (who have since left the firm) for defamation and intentional interference with economic relations.

So what did they allege?

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Blame Canada — For Its Crappy Law Schools

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The Canadian legal blogosphere has been buzzing this week over an article penned by last year by a retired Canadian law professor. In it, University of Western Ontario emeritus professor Robert Martin likens Canadian law faculties to “psychotic kindergartens” and offers other hilarious taunts about the quality of Canadian legal education.

The Guardian highlights this quote by Professor Martin: “Each fall, a horde of illiterate, ignorant cretins enters Canada’s universities. A few years later, they all move on, just as illiterate, just as ignorant and rather more cretinous, but now armed with bits of paper, which most of them are probably not able to read, called degrees.”

Some might say: this sounds just like the United States. Does Professor Martin have a newsletter or perhaps a blog of his own so that we may continue to hear his thoughts on the state of legal education?

While Martin has a number of excellent quips about Canadian education, he reserves his biggest guns for the value proposition of going to law school. His thoughts should resonate with many American law students….

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Verdict of the Day: Canadian ‘Asshole’

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We expect judges to not let their personal opinions influence their judicial decisions. But it’s silly to expect judges to be automatons with no feelings. They hurt, they cry — and just like everybody else, they get angry when they have to deal with assholes.

Sadly being an asshole isn’t a crime, and so one Canadian judge just had to suck it up and let a Canadian junior hockey player charged with assault go free. But not before the judge gave the defendant a little piece of his mind. The CBC reports (gavel bang: Deadspin):

Junior hockey player Chris Doyle was found not guilty of assault Friday, but received some harsh words from P.E.I. Judge John Douglas.

“If he was charged with being a colossal asshole, I would find him guilty,” said Douglas, chief judge of the provincial court.

“Of assault causing bodily harm, I find him not guilty.”

Make no mistake. Judge Douglas was right to point out that Chris Doyle was a giant douchebag…

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Canadian Lawsuit of the Day: Lawyer Not Charmed By Witch’s Ruse

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Whoopi Goldberg ghost.JPGSome stories really write themselves:

Vishwantee Persaud allegedly defrauded a Toronto lawyer of tens of thousands of dollars by telling him she was the embodiment of the spirit of his deceased sister, come back to help him in business. Ms. Persaud now faces charges under a rarely used section of the criminal code for pretending to practice witchcraft.

We can also put the Toronto lawyer’s brain in the category of “rarely used.”

“She said she came from a long line of witches and could do tarot-card readings,” says Detective Constable Corey Jones, who investigated the case. “It was through this that she cemented [the lawyer's] trust,” setting the stage for the fraud to follow, which, according to Det. Constable Jones, included claiming fictitious expenses such as law-school tuition and cancer treatments.

Sorry, I just don’t have a lot of sympathy for the lawyer who fell for this. I’m not inclined to believe in the supernatural. If Whoopi Goldberg shows up at my house, she better bring more than a levitating penny.
Still, one has to ask why there are witchcraft laws still on the Canadian books.
Canada explains itself, eh, after the jump.

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Road Raging Lawyer of the Week: Former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant

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michael bryant.jpgDocumentarian Michael Moore would have us believe that everyone in the Great White North is friendly and loving, leave their doors unlocked, and have no need for guns. Well, there are definitely some crazy, violent types residing in Canada. Like the Greyhound bus killer. And Ontario’s former attorney general.
Michael Bryant, a Harvard LLM graduate and youngest AG in Ontario’s history, had a minor collision with a 33-year-old bike courier, who then made the unwise decision to grab onto Bryant’s Saab. From the New York Times:

[P]olice received reports of a Saab convertible racing past the fashionable shops of Bloor Street with a man clinging to its side. Two construction workers doing repairs along the road told CTV, a Canadian television network, that the car accelerated, its tires squealing, before veering into oncoming traffic on the left side of the street.
The workers said that the motorist repeatedly mounted the sidewalk and drove near lampposts in what seemed to be an attempt to brush off the man hanging onto the side.
One of the workers said the driver was “yelling pretty loud and he sounded very, very angry.” The other worker said, “He meant to knock him off.”
Several witnesses said that the clinging man flew off of the car after striking a mailbox.

Sheppard — the bike messenger — did not survive the incident, and Bryant is now charged with criminal negligence in his death. Many media outlets have pointed out that as attorney general, Bryant championed laws making Canadian roads safer, namely banning street racing.
But what they don’t point out is that sometimes bike messengers are really crazy and scary. But that doesn’t justify slamming them up against things on the road and killing them. Just punch annoying cyclists in the face. It’s okay to do in New York.
Canadian Politician Charged in Death [New York Times]
Former attorney general says he’s innocent [Associated Press]
Driver Punches Cyclist in the Face After Blocking Bike Lane [Gothamist]

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