Dale Rindero wanted to sue his former employer, believing he had been fired unfairly.
He was sure he had a good case, as the employment regulator Employment Standards Alberta and Employment Insurance had already sided with him.
But Rindero lost the two-year window to file the unfair dismissal lawsuit because his lawyer lied to him and did not do the required work.
Kevan Peterson lied about filing a lawsuit and made elaborate documents for a $ 22,000 settlement he said he had negotiated with Rindero’s former employer, according to documents from the Law Society of Alberta.
“He did nothing but lie to me. When he finally admitted he had done nothing to the courts … he just disappeared,” Rindero told Go Public from his new home in Arborfield, Sask. He lived in Bonnyville, Alta.
So Rindero turned to the insurance company, the Alberta Law Firms Association (ALIA), to claim the money he thinks he lost because his case never went to court.
But the insurer refused to consider the claim – not because Rindero did something wrong, but because Peterson violated the insurer’s rules. So he canceled his coverage.
“I do not understand,” Rindero said of ALIA’s decision. “I guess he’s there for a purpose, but I have no idea what that is.”
Experts say there is a loophole in the system – which is intended to protect Canadians from bad lawyers – that allows people like Rintero to hold the bag.
In exchange for having what is essentially a monopoly on legal services, legal expert Robert Harvie says lawyers need to be insured through their provincial law firms to protect and compensate clients when good lawyers make mistakes or bad ones hurt. intentionally customers.
“The price of this monopoly is protection [the public]and they do not, “said Harvey, a lawyer and former associate of the Alberta Law Firm, where he helped with regulatory matters and more.
Dale Rindero says he has been denied justice twice – once by a bad lawyer and then by the security that supposedly protects Canadians from troubled lawyers. (Don Somers / CBC)
He says that clients who have been wronged can easily deny claims if their lawyer violated the rules of the insurance company.
And those rules can be very specific, he says – from refusing to cooperate with law firm investigations to failing to report potential complaints to society before they even occur.
ALIA will not say which rules Peterson violated. Rindero says he was told he refused to cooperate with a law firm investigation into him.
“We ended up losing our home”
When Rindero was looking for a lawyer, the law firm directed him to its referral service, where he found Peterson.
The site showed that Peterson was in good condition with no problems. That changed after Rintero hired him in March 2016, but no one in the legal community warned Rindero.
He only found out when he called to complain about Peterson in June 2019 and was told that the man he thought was still his lawyer had been suspended five months earlier.
Rindero says the bank closed his Alberta home because he could not repay his mortgage payments – due to problems with his lawyer Kevan Peterson. (Dale Rindero)
“I was completely speechless,” Rindero said. “They should let you know when your lawyer has been suspended.”
The law firm is asking the court to appoint a guardian to inform clients when a lawyer is in trouble, but in Peterson’s case, this did not happen for several months because society believed it had no active records, according to Elizabeth J. Osler, CEO and CEO of the company.
Peterson’s suspension was extended for another 13 months on January 25, 2021, after a legal society hearing panel found him guilty of 21 violations under its code of conduct involving six clients, including Rindero. These violations included misconduct, failure to appear in court, failure to be honest, creating a forged document, advocacy during the suspension, and more.
He was ordered to pay $ 12,574 to cover the costs of the hearing, but the legal community is not allowed to use that money to pay compensation to unjust clients.
For four months after his dismissal, Rindero struggled to find work, and when he did, it was temporary manual labor doing a fraction of what he was used to – which was about $ 120,000 a year, plus bonuses.
The lack of work and compensation hit him hard, he says.
“It had a huge, huge impact,” he said. “We were trying to keep up with the bills [but] I was left behind in my mortgage payments. We ended up losing our home. ”
Since then he has found another job as a truck driver, but it is only seasonal, he does not pay as well and he has no privileges.
2 types of lawyers
Most attorneys follow the rules and serve their clients well, says Trevor Farrow, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. But he says clients should not be abandoned when lawyers make mistakes or deliberately hurt.
Those who are disciplined by the legal community fall into two categories, he says: those who make mistakes and belong to them, and those who are ruthless lawyers whose wrongdoing results in clients being hit.
Farrow says insurers often indemnify customers of the former, while others may fall on the steps.
“These are the very rare cases where he is not wrong. He is someone who does not play by the rules and has taken off,” he said.
Osgoode Law School professor Trevor Farrow says clients should not be left holding the bag when lawyers are scammers. (Submitted by Trevor Farrow)
Farrow says that while all Canadian law firms that require lawyers to have insurance, many also have a separate indemnity fund for abusive clients.
The problem is that compensation funds are often limited and cover only certain types of offenses.
For example, the BC fund only compensates for theft of money or other property, and the Alberta fund only covers cases involving misuse of funds.
“[Rindero’s] “It’s one of those cases where I think it’s right in the middle of two different sets of schemes designed to protect the public; and when those two schemes are not combined, customers are left with the bag,” Farrow said. .
Both he and Harvey say Rindero should have been compensated.
The Alberta Law Firm, which has a duty to protect the public under provincial law law, owns ALIA, but both operate largely independently.
Peterson was suspended by the Law Society of Alberta on January 25, 2021, after being found guilty of 21 counts, including failing to be honest. (Alberta Law Firm)
Go Public asked ALIA if this duty extends to its own work, but did not answer this or other questions, including whether it is fair to refuse compensation to clients when their lawyer breaks the rules and if their system ALIA punishes unjust people with bad luck getting involved with a troubled lawyer.
Instead, in a general statement, an ALIA spokesman said: “In some cases, compensation payments are not available because a Claimant or Subscriber does not meet the necessary criteria under the Professional Liability Policy.”
Harvey says the public should question the lack of answers from an insurer who should be responsible for its decisions.
“It’s becoming this little kind of closed club of initiates, and the public does not really understand what the restrictions are, what the problems are, because the initiates like it the way it is,” he said.
Rindero has little hope that ALIA will help him. He hired a new lawyer and filed a lawsuit against Peterson.
“I used to trust people to follow their word,” Rindero said. “I do not know if I can do it anymore. I tell people to watch your back, be careful, because you have no appeal if you hire a bad lawyer.”
Peterson’s suspension was supposed to expire on February 25, but the law firm’s website indicates that he is still barred from practicing law. Lawyers need to file for redress and those requests are confidential, the law firm said.
Go Public tried to contact Peterson for comment, but received no response.
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