This is very curious. Lawyers withdraw, as the story says, because they are not being paid, they get instructions that they cannot follow or because of a personal issue (getting sick etc). We don't know what the situation is here but it does seem unlikely that the Conservatives decided not to pay their lawyer. One can only hope the lawyer is not ill or has a personal issue; but if that's true what could be the instructions that cannot be followed? Stay tuned ...
Harper lawyer withdraws from Cadman case
Juliet O’Neill, Canwest News Service
OTTAWA -- Lawyer Richard Dearden withdrew Monday from representing Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his $3.5-million defamation case against the Liberals for alleging that he knew of an attempted bribe of the late Independent MP Chuck Cadman.
Dearden confirmed that he informed the court and Liberal party counsel, Chris Paliare, of his decision to withdraw from the case during a teleconference call Monday with Justice Charles Hackland.
Dearden, counsel with the Gowlings law firm, declined to cite his reasons, saying that is privileged information.
Paliare said Dearden did not state the reasons during the conference call. But he said there are generally two grounds on which lawyers withdraw from a case. One is if they are not paid, which is inconceivable in this case. The other is if there is a breakdown in the lawyer-client relationship which makes it inappropriate for the lawyer to continue the work.
A few hours after the morning call, both lawyers were notified that lawyer David Wingfield at Weir Foulds was hired to represent Harper.
Full story here: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=967490
2 comments:
From Canwest: "Dearden, counsel with the Gowlings law firm, declined to cite his reasons, saying that is privileged information."
Do you think a lawyer would refer to his illness (or some similar personal situation) as "privileged information"? I would guess not, but I'm not a lawyer. What do you think?
You are probably right -- if I quit because I was sick or had some other issue I would say so in order to avoid specultation that the client had asked me to do something unethical. But that's me and anything beyond it is speculation...
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