The Lawyers Weekly - April 6, 2012

Less than a dozen files
result in disciplinary
action by Law Society

THOMAS CLARIDGE

Two reports submitted to the Law Society of Upper Canada suggest that, by and large, Ontario’s roughly 45,000 lawyers and licensed paralegals are behaving themselves.

Independent complaints review commissioner Stindar Lal’s report stated that the number of new requests for review dropped slightly, to 238 in 2011

from 244 in 2010 and 254 in 2009. Only 12 files were sent back to the law society as deserving of action, compared with 30 in 2010 and 22 in 2009. LSUC’s director of professional regulation agreed to take action on eight of the 12 files, down from 13 in 2010 and 19 in 2009.

Lal said 115 of the 238 com-
plaints reviewed had as their
basis some form of service issue,
while 52 concerned alleged con-
flicts of interest, 24 “integrity”
and seven “finance.”
In her report, Cynthia Petersen,
the law society’s Discrimination
and Harassment Counsel, said
that in the last half of 2011 only 28
individuals reported specific com-
plaints against law society licen-

Petersen

sees, with all but one being against a lawyer. The single complaint was against one of the LSUC’s 3,500 licensed paralegals.

Of the complaints against law-
yers, 17 came from the public and
10 from LSUC members, with
two of the latter group being
articling students in the context
of their employment. Six of those
complaints involved litigants
unhappy with the conduct of
opposing counsel, while five each
involved clients complaining
about their own lawyer or one
they tried to retain. Six of the
public complaints were based in
whole or part on sex, half those
being of sexual harassment, while
five were based in whole or part
on disability, three were race-
related and two each on marital
and family status.

Using teeth in fist fight crosses line

Provocation
Continued From Page 1

Guthierrez proceeded to bite the plaintiff’s right wrist and left bicep, and then bit off a piece of Ellis’s upper and lower lips, according to the plaintiff’s testimony. “The plaintiff then watched as the defendant swallowed the portion of the plaintiff’s lips that he had bitten off,” the judgment said.

The court rejected Fallios-Guthierrez’s argument that he acted in self-defence to the wrongly perceived threat that Ellis was going to kill him and his family.

Force used in self-defence “must be reasonable and proportionate to the harm that is threatened…can-not be excessive…[and] must not be used as a vehicle for opportunistic revenge or disproportional counter-attack,” Justice Campbell wrote in Ellis v. Fallios-Guthierrez, 2012 ONSC 1670.

He said that Fallios-Guth-
ierrez “was not acting out of fear”
but out of “rage,” as the defendant
admitted during his discovery
testimony. “Biting is simply not a
reasonably anticipated tactic,”
and amounted to a battery, stated
the judge, who referred to Mike
Tyson’s infamous incident of bit-
ing off a piece of Evander Holy-
field’s ear during their 1997
heavyweight bout.

[Force used in self-defence] must be reasonable and proportionate to the harm that is threatened… cannot be excessive…[and] must not be used as a vehicle for opportunistic revenge or disproportional counter-attack.

“

Justice Kenneth Campbell, Ontario Superior Court of Justice

tion” of tort law on self-defence and provocation.

“The law in our province allows that if somebody attacks you, you’re not expected to measure, with any legal nicety, the extent of your blows. You get some leeway, but only so far until your response gets extreme and is disproportionate and unreasonable to the threat that you’re attempting to ward off,” said Kealy.

In light of the physical scar-
ring and psychological trauma
he sustained from the fight,
Ellis was seeking between
$90,000 and $130,000 in com-
pensatory damages.

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Touting the other privacy law: PIPEDA

Internet
Continued From Page 8

issues, he has found they are “not that far apart” on both protecting consumer privacy and allowing businesses to operate without undue rules and restrictions.

“It usually just comes down to
perspective and how we approach
an issue. But, more importantly,
she’s put Canada on the map
internationally in terms of pri-
vacy regulation.”
One criticism he has heard
about the Office of the Privacy
Commissioner is that it may be “a
bit too technology-focused.” It’s a
view he doesn’t share and he
believes Stoddart is responding to
public concerns.

The dogged determination in which Stoddart and her investigative team pursued Facebook earned Canada’s privacy watchdog international respect, according to Toronto privacy lawyer Mark Hayes.

“At first, Facebook didn’t take them all that seriously. But they pushed and spent time in California with Facebook, and Canada became the first jurisdiction in which the company dealt with some of its privacy issues.” n