ThERE ARE dEFINITE
dISCREpANCIES IN ThE WAY LAW SOCIETIES
dISCIpLINE MEMBERS. SOME LAWYERS SEE ThEIR LICENSES QUIETLY
REVOKEd, WhILE OThERS ENdURE LONG, pUBLIC hEARINGS ThAT ARE hUMILIATING ANd
pERMANENTLY dAMAGING.
NE F
t
Anthony Merchan
MY
BY BRUCE LIVESEY
ew recent legal scandals have generated as much Sturm
und Drang as the one caused by Winnipeg lawyer Jack
King. Years ago, he tried to coerce a client into having sex
with his wife, Lori Douglas, today an associate chief justice in Manitoba. This past summer, the salacious details
of King's actions were exposed during a Canadian Judicial
Council hearing set up to determine whether Douglas
should remain on the bench.
Yet what got obscured in all of the titillating evidence
and testimony is whether this train wreck could have been
avoided if the Law Society of Manitoba had opened a formal investigation into King back in 2004 when they first learned of his actions
— a year before Douglas was first appointed to the bench. "The law
society completely failed the public in this case," insists Rocco Galati,
the Toronto lawyer who currently represents Alex Chapman, the client King had tried to finagle into his sexual escapade. "It completely
failed the public."
Was the law society reluctant to pursue King because he was a
partner at one of Manitoba's oldest law firms — and one that boasts
ties to the law society itself? Or did the law society harshly punish
the sole practitioner who first represented Chapman in this dispute
because members of King's old firm sat on the law society's complaints
investigation committee?
T. Sher Singh
Lori douglas
www.CANADIAN
L a w ye r m a g . c o m
Jan uary
2013
27
