Tony Merchant, who is leading a lame class-action lawsuit against Toyota for "unintended acceleration," is in some trouble, again.
It was back in 2007 that a senior British Columbia judge slammed Tony Merchant for "reprehensible" conduct in trying to bill an accident victim for contingency fees.
In his decision, Justice Barry Davies of the British Columbia Supreme Court further denounced the supposedly-crooked lawyer for the "unethical and obstreperous" pursuit of a "fictitious fee account." Even worse, the Merchant Law Group "was prepared to offer false evidence to advance its own interests," Justice Davies found.
He ordered the Merchant firm to pay the victim $250,400 in damages for breach of fiduciary duty, plus $50,000 in punitive damages for conduct that was "both outrageous and scandalous," plus legal costs. The ruling was largely upheld by the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which likewise took a dim view of Merchant's conduct. Invoking in its final ruling last year a precedent that dealt with false evidence, the Appeal Court judgment included the following:
"'To give false evidence relating to the matters in question at any stage of the proceedings is a grave matter. By "false," I do not mean "erroneous;" I mean knowingly untrue.' The falsity of Mr. Merchant's evidence is commented on by the trial judge at several points in his judgment and is referenced by the majority judgment in this court."
Left unresolved, however, was the matter of Mr. Merchant's professional misconduct. Lawyers are expected to behave ethically. If they don't, they are subject to discipline from the presiding law society, the independent authority through which lawyers regulate themselves. Mr. Merchant has previously been disciplined six times by the Saskatchewan Law Society. The last time was in 2006, when he was suspended for two weeks, fined $2,500 and ordered to pay more than $58,000 in costs, for failing to disburse trust funds as ordered by the court in a messy divorce case. Instead, he had disbursed the funds as he saw fit.
In the British Columbia case, it is the British Columbia Law Society that has jurisdiction. Last month, more than a year after the case was finally resolved, the society quietly acted. For conduct variously described by the courts as grave and reprehensible, Mr. Merchant will be given a stern talking to.
In what the law society calls a conduct review, Mr. Merchant is required to meet with two senior lawyers to discuss the problems caused by his conduct and to ensure it will not be repeated. The review will take place in private, with all the particulars kept secret. It is not a formal hearing. About 70 such conduct reviews were held in British Columbia last year.
Mr. Merchant's conduct review will likely be held in Vancouver, at a place and time yet to be specified.
Deborah Armour, the law society's chief legal officer, said in a telephone interview that Justice Davies' denunciatory remarks with respect to Mr. Merchant's conduct were handled by the law society only as allegations, not as evidence. Even so, they were serious enough to warrant "an exhaustive investigation." The results of that investigation went to the society's disciplinary committee, which ordered the conduct review. If the presiding senior lawyers are satisfied with the review, that likely will be the end of it, at least in British Columbia.
However, here in Saskatchewan, that's not necessarily the case.
The Saskatchewan Law Society has indicated that it would review the case once the British Columbia Law Society was finished with it. Further sanctions could be imposed here in light of Mr. Merchant's record in this jurisdiction of six previous violations.
For the public to make sense of this is all but impossible. We don't know how the British Columbia Law Society's investigation might have diverged from Justice Davies' disparaging pronouncements. Maybe, in the view of Mr. Merchant's professional peers, his misconduct was not as egregious as the judge's ruling would indicate. Or... maybe the British Columbia Law Society has a different standard than the courts as to what, exactly, is reprehensible.
Be that as it may, this is the seventh time Merchant has been disciplined for professional misconduct. It doesn't seem to be working.
Please note that most of this story is exact wordings from Les MacPherson's column on The StarPhoenix, a local newspaper in Saskatoon owned by Postmedia News. However, this story was modified to remove Mr. MacPherson's opinions. If you would like to read his opinions, you may click on the link below.
Now, for our own opinions...
Well, this just reminds me of that crazy guy named Jack Thompson who went on a "crusade" against videogames and is no longer allowed to practice law in Florida.
Tony Merchant, who is leading a lame class-action lawsuit against Toyota for "unintended acceleration," is in some trouble, again.
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