Canadian Lawyer

16 A p r I L 2 0 1 5 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m You know Joe Groia? I bet you do. I first wrote about him in these pages five years ago, shortly after zealous LSUC disciplinarians charged him with incivil- ity contrary to the Rules of Professional Conduct. Incivility? What was that all about? And why has the law society bothered to hound Groia to the ends of the earth, at vast expense to all con- cerned? Its motives are murky, to say the least. Many of us are sick to death of the whole thing. Groia successfully defended John Felderhof, of Bre-X notoriety, on insider trading charges (that case started in 1998). He was said to have a win-at-all-costs atti- tude at trial and was accused of being stri- dent and sarcastic, rude to the lawyer for the Ontario Securities Commission, and prone to "rhetorical excess" and "petulant invective." Oh dear! A rude lawyer! What next? In 2012, an LSUC hearing panel found Groia guilty as charged. In 2013, another LSUC panel dismissed his appeal from the earlier finding. The appeal panel said many of the comments Groia made in the Felderhof case "crossed the line: they included repeated personal attacks on the integrity of the prosecutors and repeated allegations of deliberate pros- ecutorial wrongdoing that did not have a reasonable basis and were not otherwise justified by the context." This professional misconduct, said the appeal panel, harmed the administration of justice. Groia appealed again, to the Divisional Court. Once more, he lost. Justice Ian Nordheimer gave the judgment for the three-member panel. Nordheimer said for uncivil conduct to rise to the level of professional misconduct it must be con- duct that would "bring the administration of justice into dispute [sic], or would have the tendency to do so. It is conduct that calls into question the integrity of the court process and of the players involved in it." He recognized the need to permit "zealous advocacy," but — once more — there was a line that could be crossed. Groia is not the kind of guy to give up. He is now seeking leave to appeal the Divisional Court's ruling to the Ontario Court of Appeal. He is running in this month's LSUC bencher election. He has said his bencher candidacy is a referen- dum on the civility charges he has faced. I hope he gets elected. I'd like to be a fly on the wall of the benchers' private dining room when Groia and some of his perse- cutors share a bottle of Pomerol and have an intimate chat. So, what do we have here? A point- less, vindictive, expensive, and coun- ter-productive persecution, for reasons unknown, of a well-known lawyer? Or a determined attempt by the legal profes- sion to protect the administration of jus- tice from a reckless advocate run amok? Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" King Henry II of England, fed up to the back teeth with Thomas Becket, the disputatious Archbishop of Canterbury, put that question to his courtiers one day. If you're a student of history or literature, you'll know what happened next. Murder in the cathedral. Joe Groia is the Law Society of Upper Canada's modern-day turbulent priest, except that, unlike Thomas Becket, he's not leaving the scene any time soon — quite the contrary, in fact. Things aren't as neat and tidy as they were in the 12th century. Sorry, law society. L E g A L E t h I C s o p I N I o N @philipslayton SCott PaGe When will the madness stop? The LSUC has been all over Joe Groia for being impolite but has quite a relaxed approach to lawyers who have run off with their clients' money. By Philip Slayton

• Cover