Globe and Mail Update Published on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009 6:48PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 6:17PM EST
Divorce and bankruptcy are easily the messiest types of court cases going. And when they're combined into one case, things can “spiral out of control,” according to Mr. Justice Arthur (Artie) Gans of Ontario's Superior Court of Justice.
The famously outspoken judge penned some pretty strong words when he ruled last week on a couple of hearings relating to the personal bankruptcy filing of Ajax, Ont., resident Samuel Terry and subsequent legal challenges from his estranged wife, Deborah Ann Terry, and a court-appointed trustee, Irving Burton.
After a two-year barrage of legal motions, challenges and missteps, including the appearance by Mr. Terry's lawyer at the wrong courthouse, Judge Gans wrote “no one … will realize any significant benefit. … Costs attendant to these proceedings [have] escalated out of all proportion.”
The sorry state of affairs, the judge complained, was not isolated.
“After more than 35 years as a litigator and jurist I am now persuaded that much litigation is driven by reasons completely external to the actual [case between parties] and, more often than is necessary, by reaction and overreaction that causes the proceedings to spiral out of control,” he wrote. “In those circumstances, reason often gives way to emotion, energy is directed to peripheral and often irrelevant issues, and rarely expended in an attempt to resolve matters on a reasoned and reasonable footing.”
The pugnacious Toronto judge has landed in hot water a few times in the past several years for harsh or sarcastic remarks that challenged judicial notions of fairness.
The most memorable was his 2007 warning about what would happen to a young man accused in a dangerous driving case if he did not honour the terms of his release, saying: “If you transgress, I'm going to make sure that the next shower you take, there's going to be some big black guy right behind you.”
Judge Gans later apologized for making an “inappropriate” comment.
On the move
Robert Black, has left Borden Ladner Gervais LLP to join the Toronto office of Davis LLP as a partner practising securities, corporate, and mergers and acquisition law.
bartalk@globeandmail.com
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