Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 6 27 to have sex with Douglas. Other Winnipeg lawyers say they knew about some of the issues as well. "It was reasonably well known in the community," says Allan Fineblit, a former chief executive officer of the Law Society of Manitoba who is now counsel at Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP. "I certainly knew that Jack had taken and put pictures up on the Internet and had been asked to leave the firm as a result," says Fineblit, noting he didn't know about the client issues involving Chapman. A Manitoba judge, who asked to remain anonymous, echoes that view. "A significant number of lawyers and judges knew of this and knew of it when she was appointed," says the judge. For her part, Douglas notes part of the issue when it came to the judicial council complaint was whether it would be able to obtain the information from Freedman that she had disclosed the matter given his oath of confidentiality about the appointments. While accepting the complaint against her and moving ahead with the hearings was one way to get it, she believes the judicial coun- cil should have been able to subpoena his evidence to get what it needed without going down that route. "It should have to be drag- ging Martin in by the skin of his teeth to get the very evidence that could have solved this problem," she says. In the meantime, the hearings languished amid various Federal Court challenges along the way. At one point, Pratte filed an appli- cation for judicial review after the inquiry panel hearing the case turned to its own counsel to, in his view, aggressively cross-examine witnesses. Pratte also took issue with the inquiry panel's view on solicitor-client privilege, and Douglas herself alleged there was a reasonable apprehension of bias against her. "It was completely improper," says Block of the questioning by the inquiry panel's counsel, George Macintosh. Under the rules, she says, Macintosh wasn't entitled to participate in the hearing. In 2013, Federal Court Justice Judith Snider ordered a stay of the inquiry proceedings after considering Douglas' allegations of a reasonable apprehension of bias by the inquiry committee due to improper cross-examination by its counsel. In 2014, the Fed- eral Court considered an application for judicial review by Douglas that included an allegation that the judicial council's assertion of a solicitor-client relationship with its independent counsel gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of institutional bias. In that case, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley rejected Douglas' allegation of institutional bias. The original inquiry panel ended up resigning, with its chair- woman, Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Catherine Fraser, decry- ing the various procedural challenges. "Judges are not entitled to a process that includes unlimited steps and interlocutory privileges for the judge at public expense and certainly not one that defeats the wider public interest that must be served by the judicial con- duct process itself," she wrote in the panel's 2013 reasons for its resignation. "Public confidence in the public complaints process that Parliament has established would be abandoned if anyone with standing could cripple its critical role simply by engaging in interlocutory judicial review." Block, however, rejects those assertions. "That is so false. . . . We went to trial," she says. "We brought a [judicial review] after [Fraser] had George Macintosh do this dreadful examination of Jack King." For her part, Douglas challenges the notion that she could have appealed after the inquiry panel had concluded its work. "You can't appeal," she says, citing her concern about the need to ensure fairness while the hearings were going on rather than aftewards. "Mistakes that get made along the way do not get rectified," she says. She also reiterates her right to challenge the judicial council given the facts of the case. "If I had done something on the bench or even in my private life that could affect my ability to sit on the bench . . . maybe that's different. But if you don't do anything, why should judges just give up?" Douglas also has significant concerns about how the judicial council operates and says she sees many areas for reform. "If I could revamp the process, I would try to duplicate what the law societies do across the country," she says, citing the need to involve laypeople on inquiry panels. She takes particular issue, however, with its approach to the photos in the first place. Rather than take her through a disciplinary proceeding, she argues, it should have stuck up for her given that she had done nothing wrong. "But nobody spoke up for me," she says, suggesting the judicial council was afraid of bad publicity if it didn't take the issue seriously when the story about the photos and the alleged harassment first hit the headlines. "I think the CJC was afraid of the news," she says, suggesting the reaction would likely have been different if she had been a man. "If I had been a man whose wife was taking pictures, the CJC would have said, 'Poor Joe. He's married to a wing nut.'" Douglas says she never actually saw the photos herself. "I didn't know if he had film in the camera," she says of King. "It was his thing." While the photos ultimately put great stress on their marriage, she says it had been a great relationship up until then. The pair married when she was about 40 years old after meeting while working at the same law firm. King was very intelligent, she notes, but he could rub people the wrong way. While it had been a happy marriage up until 2003, things began to change at that point. "He had become odd, strange, difficult," says Douglas, calling him "super depressed." As for the photos, she suggests King may have been trying to "inject some sort of excitement into his life." He went on to post the photos as he attempted to interest Chapman in Doug- las, an effort that would land him and his wife in so much trouble. What was her reaction when she learned of the existence of the pictures online? "Furious," says Douglas. "All I said was: 'How could you have done that to me?' And he had no answer." According to Douglas, King would apologize to her almost I LOST MY JOB. I LOST MY LIFE. I LOST MY REPUTATION. IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR MY SON, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN LITTLE REASON TO KEEP ON. " "

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