Lawyers Squandering Court Resources

Submitted by Richard on Tue, 08/04/2008 - 5:18am

What's better for Ontario should be good for B.C.
Powerful people trying to get kinks out of court system
Joey Thompson, The Province Published: Monday, April 07, 2008

Finally, someone with the guts to tell it as he sees it: A Toronto law professor says lawyers are wasting legal-aid money and squandering court resources with reckless legal tactics, runaway trials and abrasive, abusive behaviour.

Criminal-law expert Michael Code's remarks before a legal seminar in Ottawa recently aren't likely to earn him points with other legal beagles. But I suspect they will be warmly felt by many Canadians whose faith in the courts has been in freefall for years.

The law professor didn't pull any punches: Fly-by-night legal motions and a wasteful abuse of legal aid – robbing those who need assistance with family law and civil cases – has caused an unsustainable crisis within the justice system.

Even more surprising was that Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Michael Moldaver agreed with him.

Moldaver, according to the Globe and Mail, said criminal trials “have become interminable games in which the trial of the accused is regularly overshadowed by the trial of the investigation.”
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Will any substantial improvements to the court system come out of these allegations?

I doubt it.

Lawyers have been abusing the system for too many years to allow any significant changes to the money cow.

For those who think that the criminal-justice system needs cleaning up, these are mostly junior associates doing the milking, just look at the Parliamentary Inquiry system. That's where lawyers are making the big rip-offs. Prolonging un-necessary proceedings with over-charged rates all coming out of the public purse. It's not that our elected officials can't put a stop to these tax-money wasting shenanigans, they encourage them. Especially those in opposition. When ever there appears to be an issue that they refuse to, or don't know how to, resolve, there is a call for an inquiry. Just put the matter into the hand of “our friends” knowing that the matter will never reach a positive outcome. The judge in charge can't be held to account and the parliamentarians are basically off the hook.

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