Truck driver robbed of day in court, denied compensation after lawyer lies, gets suspended and disappears
CBC
A truck driver says he was denied justice twice — first by his own lawyer who lied and fabricated documents, then by the law society's insurer, which refused to compensate him because that same lawyer didn't follow its rules.
Dale Rindero wanted to sue his former employer, believing he'd been unfairly fired.
He was sure he had a good case since the labour regulator Employment Standards Alberta and Employment Insurance had already sided with him.
But Rindero missed the two-year window to file his wrongful dismissal lawsuit because his lawyer lied and didn't do the required work.
Kevan Peterson lied about filing a claim with the court and fabricated elaborate documents for a $22,000 settlement he said he'd negotiated with Rindero's former employer, according to Law Society of Alberta documents.
"He had done nothing except lie to me. When he finally admitted he had not done anything with the courts … he kind of just disappeared,'' Rindero told Go Public from his new home in Arborfield, Sask. He used to live in Bonnyville, Alta.
So Rindero turned to the law society's insurance, the Alberta Lawyers Indemnity Association (ALIA), to file a claim for the money he believes he lost because his case never made it to court.
But the insurer refused to consider the claim — not because Rindero did anything wrong, but because Peterson broke the insurer's rules. So it cancelled his coverage.
"I don't understand," Rindero said of the ALIA decision. "I assume they're there for a purpose but I have no idea what that is."
Experts say there's a gap in the system — which is meant to protect Canadians from bad lawyers — that leaves people like Rindero holding the bag.
In exchange for having what is basically a monopoly on legal services, legal expert Robert Harvie says lawyers are required to have insurance through their provincial law societies to protect and compensate clients when good lawyers make mistakes or bad ones intentionally harm clients.
"The price of that monopoly is to protect [the public], and they're not doing it," said Harvie, a lawyer and a former bencher with the Law Society of Alberta, where he assisted with regulatory matters and more.
He says clients who have been wronged can easily be denied claims if their lawyer broke the insurer's rules.
And those rules can be very particular, he says — ranging from refusing to co-operate with law society investigations to failing to report potential complaints to the society before they even happen.
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