Global Clean Energy Inc (GCEI)

[Lexit]

Update Post #63 - Adessky

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=52311904

GLTA

Case Reference 06-09-02493: Earl Takefman - Adessky (GCEI)

http://www.canlii.org/eliisa/highlight.do?text=%22Kenneth+Adessky%22&language=en&searchTitle=Search+all+CanLII+Databases&path=/fr/qc/qccdbq/doc/2010/2010qccdbq68/2010qccdbq68.html


Adessky was recently found guilty by the Quebec Bar of misappropriation of funds in Case Reference 06-09-02493 and is awaiting a sentencing hearing on 21-22-23 June 2011, in Montreal:

DATE: 2011-06-21 HEURE: 16:0 SALLE: Salle 350
(Maison du Barreau)
NO DOSSIER: 06-10-02593 (Audition sur culpabilité)
NOMS DES PARTIES: Me Claude G. Leduc c. Me Kenneth Adessky
NATURE DE LA PLAINTE: Appropriation
LIEU DE PRATIQUE: Montréal
PROCUREUR DE L'INTIMÉ: Me Jean-Sylvain Pelletier
PRÉSIDENT: Me Jean-Guy Légaré, président suppléant
MEMBRES: Me Charles E. Bertrand
Me Maurice Cloutier

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DATE: 2011-06-22 HEURE: 16:0 SALLE: Salle 350
(Maison du Barreau)
NO DOSSIER: 06-10-02593 (Audition sur culpabilité)
NOMS DES PARTIES: Me Claude G. Leduc c. Me Kenneth Adessky
NATURE DE LA PLAINTE: Appropriation
LIEU DE PRATIQUE: Montréal
PROCUREUR DE L'INTIMÉ: Me Jean-Sylvain Pelletier
PRÉSIDENT: Me Jean-Guy Légaré, président suppléant
MEMBRES: Me Charles E. Bertrand
Me Maurice Cloutier

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DATE: 2011-06-23 HEURE: 16:0 SALLE: Salle 350
(Maison du Barreau)
NO DOSSIER: 06-10-02593 (Audition sur culpabilité)
NOMS DES PARTIES: Me Claude G. Leduc c. Me Kenneth Adessky
NATURE DE LA PLAINTE: Appropriation
LIEU DE PRATIQUE: Montréal
PROCUREUR DE L'INTIMÉ: Me Jean-Sylvain Pelletier
PRÉSIDENT: Me Jean-Guy Légaré, président suppléant
MEMBRES: Me Charles E. Bertrand
Me Maurice Cloutier

http://www.barreau.qc.ca/roles-discipline/

The Gazette (a Montreal newspaper) is also reportaing that the Quebec Bar is also being sued in this matter:

Quebec lawyers’ disciplinary body under attack

By Jan Ravensbergen, THE GAZETTE March 31, 2011

MONTREAL - The Barreau du Québec is grappling with such a serious backlog in processing complaints and disciplinary procedures against its lawyer members that it doesn’t appear to have a firm grip on the average length of time it takes to resolve a disciplinary matter – which can often prove a years-long odyssey.

The Gazette has learned both the Office des professions and the Quebec ombudsman’s office have been probing and prodding the Barreau over its delays.

In one example, a woman’s case against her former lawyer dragged on for 17 years. In another, a businessman has gone to the courts after 28 months of frustration.

The Office des professions, the Quebec body that oversees 46 professional orders, has for more than two years been quietly trying to call the Barreau to order – in some cases with the involvement of an investigator assigned by the Quebec Ombudsman.

In a letter dated March 17, 2010, to Pierre Chagnon, then the Barreau’s Bâtonnier, the Office stated that one-third of all the complaints it had received “in recent years” about the conduct of all professional orders in Quebec were triggered by the way the Barreau deals with complaints against its members.

That is a “preoccupying volume,” Jean-Paul Dutrisac, the president of the Office, added in the five-page letter.

With 23,263 members, the Barreau accounts for 6.9 per cent of the 340,000 members of professional bodies whose self-regulatory activities are overseen by the Office.

However, Dutrisac told Chagnon, “our (direct) interventions with your services represent close to one-half of all our interventions.”

The Barreau’s position has been that it has no obligation to disclose how many years it takes on average for a complaint to be investigated, dealt with and closed.

Asked to pin down that figure, Barreau spokesperson Martine Meilleur responded last week: “We will not tell you the durations of the procedures. The principal reason is attributable to the fact that this information is not compiled as you wish, notably because the (internal Barreau) services have not entirely computerized the management of data relative to their activities.”

It has also refused to provide answers to a series of similar requests filed by Montreal businessman Earl Takefman, under Quebec’s access to information law.

Frustrated by “interminable delays” in a disciplinary case he brought to the Barreau in 2008, Takefman has now taken both the Barreau and the Quebec Ministry of Justice before Quebec Superior Court.

His 24-page filing with the court, delivered by bailiff to the Barreau and the Ministry of Justice, alleges the Barreau wronged him by “omitting, neglecting, ignoring and refusing to properly and efficiently oversee the practice of the legal profession.”Takefman asks for a judge to call the Barreau to order – to instruct the professional body to speed up and better supervise and monitor its disciplinary proceedings.

Sometimes just the investigation into a complaint takes years.

For Dollard des Ormeaux resident Dolia Ivanov, it took 17 years for a 1991 complaint about the conduct of lawyer André Simard to be dealt with by the Barreau’s disciplinary committee. Ivanov is now suing the Barreau for $550,000 in damages.

Takefman – angered by the actions of two lawyers with whom he dealt, and then by a pattern of repeated delays in bringing them to account – is taking a different approach.

He’s out to pierce the shell of what he calls a self-regulating body shielded from public accountability and disinterested in being scrutinized.

Takefman’s motion says: “The Barreau appears to believe that it operates with immunity and impunity regarding any of its breaches and violations of the (Professional) Code by those who are involved with the disciplinary process.”

Last November, Takefman asked the Barreau to disclose the average length of time its disciplinary council has taken to render an initial decision on complaints against a Barreau member. The Barreau disciplinary council judges the guilt or innocence of a lawyer alleged to have breached professional standards, and imposes any sanctions deemed appropriate.

Takefman requested disclosure of these averages for each of the prior five years on cases filed by the Syndic – the bar’s equivalent of an internal prosecutor – and on cases filed by citizens.

He got the cold shoulder.

The Barreau “is not in possession of the requested documents,” Sylvie Champagne, the order’s secretary, wrote to Takefman. “Or it will need to compile the information for statistics, which is not an obligation pursuant to the (Quebec) Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies and the protection of information.”

Meilleur declined to provide a Barreau document called “Optimization plan for the operations of the office of the Syndic,” to which the Office des professions referred in its March 2010 letter to the Bar Bâtonnier:

“This is an internal working document,” Meilleur said. “The process can be explained to you – but the document itself is not public.”

That document also wouldn’t be provided by the Office des professions, said Denys Duchaine. A special counsellor reporting directly to the Office president, Duchaine was parachuted in more than a year ago to grapple directly with the backlog of complaints lodged about the Barreau.

Takefman’s motion says in November 2008, he “initiated complaints with the Barreau against two lawyers for violations of ethics,” alleging that one “misappropriated funds given to him in trust for his own self-enrichment.”

“Following an initial refusal to act by the assistant Syndic (at the Barreau), categorized by a clear error of law on the assistant Syndic’s part,” the motion adds, Takefman “has, over the past 28 months, been constrained to deal with the various bodies within the Barreau’s disciplinary process including the Syndic, the assistant Syndic, the ad hoc Syndic, the review committee, the disciplinary council constituted to rule on plaintiff’s private complaint and the president of the disciplinary council.”

Takefman underscores his motion by citing the proportion of Barreau problem cases that end up with the Office des professions. An investigator from the Quebec Ombudsman’s office has also been assigned to probe some of the same cases.

Arguing that justice delayed is justice denied, Takefman’s motion notes that under Quebec law, the “principal function” of the Barreau is “to ensure the protection of the public,” a mission statement the Barreau has placed in the most prominent spot on its Facebook page.

Takefman has asked Quebec Superior Court to issue a sweeping – and unprecedented – declaratory judgment against the Barreau.

Among other actions, he’s asking a judge to order the Barreau “to allow delays (beyond those set out in the Professional Code) only in the rarest of circumstances.”

Takefman has also requested the court instruct the Barreau “to actively supervise and manage the various bodies that engage in the disciplinary process to adhere to all of the provisions and timing noted” in the Code.

He’s asked the judge to buttress that by fining the Barreau $220,000 for the alleged violations of the professional code in the two cases he’s brought to it. “I have not asked for any damages and have nothing to gain personally from this lawsuit,” Takefman said. “I am doing this for the right reasons.”

In the Superior Court case, Takefman said, “I am doing this totally myself without a lawyer. ... I have set up a new email at [e-mail] where people can email their horror stories.”

[e-mail]

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Quebec+lawyers+disciplinary+body+under+attack/4532356/story.html