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CENTRAL Hinse's wrongful conviction decision includes 'totally new law' decades ago have obtained a record Canadian award of $13.1 million in financial compensation. The scathing judgment of how the L federal government handled the case of Réjean Hinse, who spent five years of a 15-year sentence in jail for an armed robbery in the Laurentian municipal- ity of Mont-Laurier in 1961, also broke ground on other legal fronts. Quebec Superior Court Justice Hélène Poulin agreed with arguments that the federal attorney general's office was guilty of "institutional negligence." "The issue is whether the government of Canada can be held liable for failing to exercise its powers of clemency or failing to investigate the situation," says Guy J. Pratte, the Borden Ladner Gervais LLP litigator who worked on the case with Alexander De Zordo and Katherine Loranger starting in 2008. "In this case, the court found that the failure of the federal government to take [Hinse's] com- plaints seriously early enough caused him an additional damage when they had evidence to suggest there was a wrongful conviction as early as the 1970s. That fail- ure to exercise their powers with diligence at the relevant time is a new finding — totally new law." The legal team had argued the obliga- tion is inherent in s. 696.2 of the Criminal Code of Canada outlining procedures in cases of claimed miscarriages of justice. In her judgment, Poulin wrote that the fed- eral attorney general's office "adopted an attitude of total denial," as Hinse sought to have his conviction overturned — as early as 1966 — with affidavits he obtained from three people, in the same jail where he was, who admitted involvement in the robbery in question and declared his innocence. In 1988, the Quebec Police Commission, which did not exist at the time of the con- viction but agreed to investigate upon urging by Hinse, determined the police handling of the case was "rotten." Even after the Supreme Court acquitted Hinse in 1997, "the federal government contin- ued to turn a deaf ear when the Quebec justice minister proposed indemnifica- tion . . . perpetuating the denial of justice he confronted for more than 35 years." For that reason, as part of the total award of $8.6 million against the federal government, Poulin imposed $2.5 mil- lion in exemplary damages — half the amount originally claimed by Hinse from the offices of both the federal and Quebec attorney general and the largest award of punitive damages by a Quebec court. Quebec's attorney general office, also originally named in the civil suit, quickly agreed to settle with Hinse for $4.5 mil- lion over a weekend after the presentation of evidence, including three days of tes- timony by Hinse, and before legal argu- awyers representing a Quebec man seeking redress for a wrong- ful conviction more than four Lawyers Katherine Loranger, Guy Pratte, and Alexander De Zordo with client Réjean Hinse. ments in last fall's four-week trial. Following the settlement, lawyers for Hinse argued their case only against the federal government. Lawyers for the federal attorney general had maintained throughout that since provincial police and courts were involved in the convic- tion of Hinse, the Quebec government was liable for any unjust actions. As well, they maintained that the provincial attor- ney general, under a federal-provincial agreement on indemnification, had told them Hinse did not meet the criteria for compensation. (Hinse's lawyers managed to obtain a letter from Quebec saying that he should be indemnified even though he did not meet all of the criteria, includ- ing not only an acquittal but a proof of innocence.) Also novel, at least for Quebec, is the awarding of fees for the pro bono legal work undertaken by BLG. The lawyers had cited a 2006 Ontario Court of Appeal decision — 1465778 www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com JUNE 2011 9 C ontinued on pa g e 11