Lawyers Gone Bad

by Philip Slayton

  No doubt Hunter, his blue-chip law firm, and the law society hoped that was the end of the matter, but it was not to be. In December 2007, the client with whom Hunter had an affair brought a legal action against him and his law firm, seeking $1.4 million in damages. George Hunter was back in the public eye. “Hunter and firm sued over steamy affair,” said one headline in early 2008. “Exlaw society head, firm sued over sex with family law client,” said another. There was no comment from Gary Neinstein.

  Michael Bomek (Chapter 9), once an admired criminal defence lawyer practising in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, was convicted of sexual assault, drug trafficking, and making child pornography. I thought his story was over when he went to jail in January 2007, but in February 2008, Bomek was back in the news, hauled out of jail to be tried for obstruction of justice. Former Saskatchewan provincial court judge Terry Bekolay testified that in 2003 Bomek asked him for a favour in a bail hearing for Norman Custer, a twenty-seven-year-old charged with aggravated assault. In December 2003, Bomek and Bekolay had coffee at Tim Horton’s, and Bomek allegedly tried to give Bekolay a nude photograph of Custer. Bekolay said he refused the photograph and was not influenced in his bail decision (bail was granted). According to news reports, Bekolay testified that he had often gone for coffee with Bomek, who would show him pictures of naked men, and that he had sex with some of them at Bomek’s home in a room called the Boom-Boom Room. Bekolay, a former president of the Saskatchewan NDP, was suspended from the bench in 2006 and resigned in 2007. On February 29, 2008, Bomek was given an additional year in prison, on top of time he was already serving, for attempting to obstruct justice.

  Between 1999 and 2002, Martin Wirick (see Chapter 12) was part of the biggest fraud in Canadian legal history. In January 2006, David Baines of the Vancouver Sun wrote, “The magnitude of the fraud perpetrated by former Vancouver lawyer Martin Wirick … is breathtaking. So is the amount of time it is taking police to investigate the case.” Baines predicted that it would be two years before charges were laid. At the end of 2006, the Vancouver police and RCMP were still looking into the matter; Wirick told me then that he was ready to go to jail, but no one seemed interested in putting him away. In November 2007, Baines wrote, “Despite a large and costly apparatus for dealing with commercial crime, few white collar criminals in B.C. end up in jail.” In early 2008, notwithstanding Baines’s prediction in 2006 that there would be charges in 2008, the police are still investigating the Wirick affair. Is Wirick still ready to go to jail? I doubt it.

  In January 2006, I went to Kansas and visited Marvin Singleton in Leavenworth prison (see Chapter 13). Singleton once practised law in Nelson, British Columbia. When I went to Leavenworth, Singleton was inexplicably fighting extradition to Canada on charges of theft and fraud committed while a lawyer. He seemed to prefer a jail cell in Kansas to a trial in Canada. But on September 5, 2006, he unexpectedly appeared in Provincial Court in Nelson and was released on bail. A local journalist told me that he has since been spotted at the local museum and the courthouse library. Someone else reports that he spends every Wednesday at the court-house, presumably working on his defence. Crown counsel says that Singleton’s trial date, on charges of theft and fraud, will be set soon. Apparently, the trial is being delayed by a large number of pre-trial motions brought by Singleton.

  Meanwhile, Harry Kopyto (see Chapter 15), a disbarred lawyer who has worked for many years as a paralegal, continues an idiosyncratic fight against what he considers “injustice.” In January 2008, for example, it was reported that Kopyto was considering taking the case of a client called Ron Guild to the “United Nations human rights committee.” Guild, says Kopyto, was discriminated against when the federal government compensated victims of tainted blood transfusions. But time may be running out for Harry and his quixotic causes. In May 2007, the Law Society of Upper Canada, no friend of Harry’s, was granted the power to regulate and licence paralegals. The law society is now implementing the licencing process. Harry has applied, but the speculation is that he will be denied a licence because he is not “of good character.” Harry has been quoted as saying, “They will eat me alive and pick their teeth with my bones.” In November 2007, the law society formally reprimanded a lawyer, Joseph Markin, just for associating professionally with Harry Kopyto. The law society made Markin undertake “that he will not associate in any way with Harry Kopyto … until he has approval from the Committee of Convocation to do so.” The omens are not good for Harry Kopyto.

  Robert Strother has walked away from the Supreme Court of Canada, bloodied a bit but largely unbowed. Peter Shoniker and Simon Rosenfeld, convicted money launderers, remain on the rolls of Ontario lawyers. George Hunter, once treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada, who wanted to disbar Gary Neinstein for sexual indiscretions with a client, has been suspended for two months for his own sexual misadventures. Bomek is once more in the news. Martin Wirick is still waiting to hear from the police about the biggest legal fraud in Canadian history. Marvin Singleton, fresh from Leavenworth prison in Kansas, is back in British Columbia, busy in the courthouse library preparing his defence against theft and fraud charges. Harry Kopyto confidently expects that the law society will not allow him to practise as a paralegal.

  At least, the Law Society of Manitoba has finally disposed of the troublesome Ingrid Chen.

  SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The primary written sources for this book are court records, including trial and appellate judgments and transcripts, reports of law society disciplinary proceedings, and, in some instances, private documents to which I had access. I also rely, from time to time, on journalistic reporting, principally newspaper accounts.

  I interviewed many people, some in person and some by telephone. I identify them, and the date and place of interview, except in the case of a few who did not want to be named. The people I interviewed included many of the lawyers I write about. Only two, Bob Donaldson and Robert Strother, refused to speak to me.1 Martin Pilzmaker died some years ago.2 Angie Codina did not reply to the letter I sent her in a U.S. prison. I couldn’t find Reeves Matheson and Eric Belhassen. I did not speak to Simon Rosenfeld and Peter Shoniker; both were before the courts on criminal charges at the time I was working on this book. I spoke to anyone else I thought could help me understand the lawyers and stories I was writing about, including colleagues, friends, family members, and clients of the lawyers in question, law society representatives, Crown prosecutors, police officers, a moral philosopher, a psychiatrist, and journalists.

  I am indebted to many people. Those who helped in various ways include Mary Adachi, Toronto; Walter Bachman, New York; Rodger Beehler, Victoria; Marilyn Billinkoff, Winnipeg; Michael Bomek, Prince Albert; Beth Brock, Nelson, British Columbia; Steven Bulut, Toronto; Lois Burke, Flin Flon; Dennis Cann, North Battleford; Stephen Cheikes, Vancouver; Ingrid Chen, Winnipeg; Patricia Chisholm, Toronto; Kirby Chown, Toronto; Daniel Cooper, Toronto; Paul Copeland, Toronto; Jim Cross, Wichita, Kansas; Brad Daisley, Vancouver; Kristin Dangerfield, Winnipeg; Avrum Fenson, Toronto; Ken Filkow, Winnipeg; Christina Finney, Lachine, Quebec; Michael Fitz-James, Toronto; Sol Goldstein, Toronto; Arnold Goodman, Watrous, Saskatchewan; Scott Gray, The Pas; Douglas Haddow, Nelson, British Columbia; James A. Hodgson, Toronto; Albert J. Hudec, Vancouver; Gillian Lewando Hundt, Leamington Spa, England; Karl Jaffary, Toronto; J. Agnew Johnston, Thunder Bay; Logan Kline, Wichita, Kansas; Henry Kloppenburg, Saskatoon; Harry Knutson, Vancouver; Harry Kopyto, Toronto; Freya Kristjansen, Toronto; Dan Le Dressay, Vancouver; Earl Levy, Toronto; W.R. (Bill) Majcher, Vancouver; James Matkin, Vancouver; Bruce McLeod, Winnipeg; Marci L. Melvin, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia; David Merrick, Vancouver; Lore Mirwaldt, The Pas; Robert Morrison, Winnipeg; Jonathon Naylor, Flin Flon; Andrew and Janine Pavey, Vancouver; Alfred Petrone, Thunder Bay; Julian Porter, Toronto; Gerry Posner, Winnipeg; Richard Potter, Toronto; Guy Pratte, Ottawa; Gordon Pullan, Winnipeg; Luc Quenneville, Creston, British Columbia; Eileen Ryan, Fredericton; Arthur Scace, Toronto;
Richard Schwartz, Winnipeg; Ian Scott, Toronto; Richard Shead, Winnipeg; Marvin Singleton, Leavenworth, Kansas; Donald Skogstad, Nelson, British Columbia; Doug Ward, Winnipeg; Kim Whiteside, Winnipeg; Martin Wirick, Vancouver; Gavin Wood, Winnipeg; and Gene Zazelenchuk, Winnipeg.

  I spent the (Canadian) winter of 2006 as a visiting professor of law at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. There I tried out many of the ideas and stories in this book on my colleagues and students, and on members of the local bar. South African lawyers knew exactly what I was talking about when I described the perils of practising law. My particular thanks go to professors Mike Larkin, Julien Hofman,3 Christina Murray, and Graham Bradfield, and to Laurie and Lourens Ackermann.

  A few of these stories, in earlier and shorter versions, and some of my ideas about lawyers have appeared in Canadian Lawyer magazine over recent years. In particular, Chapter 1 incorporates several thoughts that have appeared in my monthly column “Law & Money.” I indicate, by endnote, if I have written before on the same subject, in Canadian Lawyer or elsewhere.

  This book was finished on December 31, 2006, and attempts to be current as of that date. Some of the cases I describe were not then over. The Law Society of Manitoba had not decided whether to disbar Ingrid Chen. Simon Rosenfeld’s appeal against his conviction on money laundering charges had yet to be heard. We awaited the Supreme Court of Canada’s judgment in the Strother litigation. And Marvin Singleton, sitting in a cell in Leavenworth, Kansas, where I visited him early in 2006, continued his mysterious fight against extradition to Canada.

  NOTES

  Epigraph

  1. Sybille Bedford, Quicksands: A Memoir (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005), 46.

  One: Money, Sex and Madness

  1. A man who kills his wife or mother in a fit of rage, or becomes a pimp, may be a lawyer, but his crime probably has little to do with his being a member of the bar. Lawyers, even in Canada, do kill their wives or mothers, or become pimps. In 1989, Maurice Sychuk, an Alberta law professor, was convicted of murdering his spouse; he had stabbed her twenty-two times in a fit of rage. In 1999, Sychuk applied for readmission to the Alberta bar. His application was unanimously rejected by the hearing committee. In 1990, Sébastien Brousseau killed his mother, stabbing her forty times; while on parole, Brousseau went to law school, and in 2006 Quebec’s professions tribunal decided that he could attend the bar admission course and then be admitted to the practice of law. In 2000, Gary Wayne Patterson, a lawyer in Toronto, was convicted of pimping.

  2. Steven Lubert, professor of law at Northwestern University, writes (after a reference to the famous opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina—“happy families are all alike; but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”):

  There is no great literature about happy families, because happiness is uninteresting and, worse, there is nothing we can learn from it. To increase our knowledge, to deepen our understanding of the human condition, we must instead turn our attention to grief. That is why physicians study pathology, engineers study disasters, psychologists study psychoses, and card players endlessly replay lost hands. It can be helpful to identify the things you did right, but it is critical to recognize how things went wrong.

  Steven Lubert, Lawyers’ Poker: 52 Lessons That Lawyers Can Learn from Card Players (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 242.

  3. Samuel Ciglen v. Her Majesty the Queen, [1970] S.C.R. 804.

  4. Leger Marketing, How Canadians Perceive Various Professions (Montreal: 2004).

  5. HarrisInteractive, “Doctors, Dentists and Nurses Most Trusted Professionals to Give Advice, According to Harris Poll of U.S. Adults,” The Harris Poll 37, 10 May 2006, www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=661 (accessed 20 July 2006).

  6. www.flsc.ca/en/lawSocieties/statisticsLinks.asp (accessed 20 July 2006).

  7. This perception is continually fuelled by newspaper stories—for example, the story about the lawyer for one of those accused in the Air-India bombing who put his client’s children on the publicly funded legal defence team. See Robert Matas, “Lawyer suspended, fined over Air-India billings,” The Globe and Mail, 27 April 2006, A13. The phenomenon is universal. On holiday in the African country of Namibia, in April 2006, I picked up the local newspaper and read about “revelations this week that our legal practitioners can (and do) charge about N$240 to read an A4-size typewritten page at N$120 per 100 words. This may not constitute what we know as corruption, but it sure is daylight robbery!” See Gwen Lister, “Political perspective,” The Namibian, 13 April 2006, 6. A Namibian dollar is worth about twenty Canadian cents.

  8. (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1999).

  9. Cameron Stracher, “After (Billable) Hours,” The Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2006, W19.

  10. Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil (New York: Basic Books, 1990).

  11. Robert Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York: The Guildford Press, 1993). See 61. See also Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (New York: Regan Books, 2006).

  12. Joe Klein, The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton (New York: Doubleday, 2002). See 163.

  13. Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 22–23.

  14. xi.

  15. 35.

  16. Patrick Shiltz, “Those Unhappy, Unhealthy Lawyers,” Notre Dame Magazine, Autumn 1999.

  17. Martin E.P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness (New York: Free Press, 2002). A 2006 U.K. study of twenty-eight occupations, conducted by the vocational awards body City & Guilds, found that lawyers were second-last in the ranking of those happy at work; they fared somewhat better in the ranking of best work/life balance, tying butchers for sixth place. See “Because they’re worth it—UK beauty therapists are ‘made up’ about their jobs,” City and Guilds, 28 March 2006, www.city-andguilds.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0AC0478C-04C69067/ cgonline/hs.xsl/9543.html (accessed 20 July 2006).

  18. 178. It has been reported that a study conducted at the Virginia law school found that pessimistic law students outperformed optimistic students on traditional measures of achievement, such as exam results. See Danny Lee, “Depressed? You should be,” Times Online, 4 October 2005, www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8163-1806176,00.html (accessed 6 September 2006).

  19. 181.

  20. Law Society of Upper Canada v. Codina, [2002] L.S.D.D. No. 84.

  21. Jonathan D. Glater, “Caught Between Doing Well and Doing Good,” The New York Times, 18 November 2005, C6.

  22. Thus making what social psychologists call the “fundamental attribution error,” ascribing success to innate characteristics when what really counts is context.

  23. In 2006 federal prosecutors in the United States began laying securities fraud charges in connection with stock option backdating. It is thought that a considerable number of Silicon Valley technology companies may have indulged in this practice. The New York Times noted, “As scores of Silicon Valley firms went public in the late 1990’s, there was enormous pressure on many accounting firms and law firms to keep their newly minted clients happy.” The story went on to quote Michael S. Melbinger, an executive compensation lawyer at Winston & Strawn in Chicago: “‘These guys were dancing on leather tabletops in their leather pants.… The rules didn’t apply to them. They were the new Masters of the Universe. If they called one firm and they wouldn’t do it, you’d have firms lining up to take their business.’” Gary Rivlin and Eric Dash, “Silicon Valley Firms Scrutinized on Stock Option Policies,” The New York Times, 22 July 2006, B1. In a subsequent Times story, Gary Rivlin focused on the possible role of Larry W. Sonsini, “Silicon Valley’s most feared and sought-after lawyer.” Rivlin noted that “Mr. Sonsini’s firm provided legal counsel on corporate governance issues like the proper handling of stock options to roughly a dozen of the 25 Silicon Valley area companies implicated so far in
the widening probe.” Gary Rivlin, “A Counselor Pulled from the Shadows,” The New York Times, 30 July 2006, 3-1.

  24. Julie Hilden,“Scummery Judgment: Why Enron’s sleazy lawyers walked while their accountant fried,” Slate, 21 June 2002, www.byliner.com/story/?id=53621 (accessed 6 September 2006).

  25. Report of the Review of the Regulatory Framework for Legal Services in England and Wales, December 2004.

  26. The Future of Legal Services: Putting Consumers First, presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor, October 2005 (Cmd. 6679).

  27. David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else (New York: Portfolio, 2003), 275.

  28. Letter to the editor in Canadian Lawyer, August 2005. The author’s article on the Wirick affair appeared in the magazine’s May 2005 issue.

  29. See Michael Asimow, “Bad Lawyers in the Movies,” Nova Law Review 24 (Winter 2000), 533. See also the book by Asimow and Paul Bergen, Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 1996).

  30. See review at www.mshepley.btinternet.co.uk (accessed 19 December 2006). This is a website called “The Missing Link,” devoted to classic horror movies.

  31. There is even a scholarly treatise on jokes about lawyers—Marc Galanter, Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). Galanter groups lawyer jokes into four categories: “The Lawyer as Economic Predator,” “Lawyers as Fomenters of Strife,” “The Lawyer as Morally Deficient,” and “Death Wish Jokes.” He observes that jokes about lawyers sharpened when the profession introduced hourly billing. A sample joke given by Galanter: “An ancient, nearly blind old woman retained the local lawyer to draft her last will and testament, for which he charged her two hundred dollars. As she rose to leave, she took the money out of her purse and handed it to him, enclosing a third hundred-dollar bill by mistake. Immediately the attorney realised he was faced with a crushing ethical question: Should he tell his partner?”