Pembroke council delays reconsidering contract with mayor’s law firm

despair

City councillors in Pembroke, Ont., voted Tuesday night to delay reconsidering its decades-old contract with the city’s solicitor — a lawyer at Sheppard & Gervais, the law firm the mayor currently works at.

The relationship between Mayor Ron Gervais, the firm, and city solicitor Robert Sheppard has been under scrutiny after some residents raised questions about perceived and possible conflicts of interest in recent media coverage.

Gervais has been an elected official on the council for more than a decade, and served as deputy mayor before becoming mayor last November. The city has been paying Sheppard & Gervais for legal

…Continue Reading

Hunter Biden lawyers to meet with Justice Department officials next week as scrutiny of investigation intensification

despair



CNN
—

Lawyers for Hunter Biden are scheduled to meet next week with US attorney David Weiss and at least one senior career official from Justice Department headquarters to discuss the long-running investigation into the president’s son, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The Hunter Biden legal team had reached out to Justice officials in recent weeks, asking for an update on the case. As is routine, when lawyers request a status update, they were invited to meet next week, according to one source familiar with the meeting.

Weiss, the US Attorney in Delaware who was appointed by

…Continue Reading

Mom of Virginia 6-year-old who shot his teacher was depressed, attorney says

despair

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The mother of a 6-year-old Virginia boy who shot and wounded his teacher had a series of miscarriages and post-partum depression in the year before the shooting, her attorney said Friday, after she was arraigned on charges of child neglect and failing to secure the handgun her son used in the shooting.

Police say the boy fired a single shot at his first-grade teacher, Abigail Zwerner, on Jan. 6, striking her in the left hand and chest. She spent two weeks in the hospital and has had four surgeries since shooting.

Virginia elementary school teacher Abigail Zwerner poses for a portrait at an undisclosed location in Virginia on March 20, 2023.
Virginia elementary school teacher Abigail
…Continue Reading

MANDEL: Is the Ontario law society too ‘woke’? Election battle begins

despair

Woke is the word and it’s being used to demarcate the bitter lines drawn in the battle for governing control of the Law Society of Ontario.

Lawyers across the province begin voting Wednesday to elect 40 lawyers and five paralegal directors who will serve four years at the helm of the self-regulating profession. The FullStop slate of candidates has declared the LSO has “lost its way” and must be stopped from ttreating members with discipline for “colouring outside the lines of approved groupthink.”

In a column for the Financial Postfor example, noted

…Continue Reading

Mississauga votes to allow legal retail cannabis stores – Toronto

despair

Ontario’s legal cannabis market is poised to grow significantly larger, with the province’s largest city that had banned retail pot stores voting Wednesday to opt in.

Mississauga, Ont., was one of dozens of municipalities to bar retail cannabis stores from their communities when legalization came into effect in 2018. But, four and a half years later, a city report highlighted that Mississauga residents are “disproportionately” served by the illegal market in the absence of legal stores.

City council voted Wednesday 8-4 to opt in.

Mayor Bonnie Crombie also spoke in favour, saying she had supported opting out in 2018, hoping

…Continue Reading

Donald Trump Sues Former Attorney Michael Cohen for Telling People About All His Alleged Crimes

despair

once upon a time, Donald Trump could rely on attorney Michael Cohen to do his dirty work, like demanding The Onions take down an article with Trump’s byline and a headline that read, “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Remember I’ll Be Dead in About 15 Or 20 Years”; or paying a porn star $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged affair. “If someone does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Cohen told ABC News in 2011. “If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab

…Continue Reading

Trump lawyer reportedly ordered to testify in the Mar-a-Lago case

despair

When Jan. 6 investigators sought answers from John Eastman, the Republican lawyer respondent with predictable pushback: He argued that he couldn’t testify because his work related to keeping Donald Trump in power after his 2020 defeat was protected by attorney-client privilege.

It was at that point that the political world received a helpful legal primer about the limits of the legal protection: Communications between attorneys and clients are not protected if they’re discussing committing crimes. (Eastman ultimately took the Fifth.)

Today, the same issue is coming to the fore in a way the former president isn’t going to like —

…Continue Reading

Mississauga votes to allow legal retail pot shops

despair

Ontario’s largest municipality without any legal cannabis retail stores has voted to now allow the shops.

Mississauga, Ont., was one of dozens of municipalities to bar retail cannabis stores from their communities when legalization came into effect in 2018.

But now, four and a half years later, the city council has voted 8-4 to opt in.

The decision comes after a city report highlighted that Mississauga residents are “disproportionately” served by the illegal market in the absence of legal stores.

Count. Dipika Damerla put forward the motion, saying that opting out of the legal framework has allowed illegal stores to

…Continue Reading