Source: http://www.isthatlegal.ca/index.php?name=Lawyers
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 12:01:05+00:00

Document:
This is the law of lawyers. It is primarily governed by the Law Society Act and its Regulations, but also by the Rules of Professional Conduct and the Law Society By-Laws.
 This court has observed that it is well-established law that “a solicitor of record has the ostensible authority to bind his or her clients and that opposing counsel are entitled to rely upon that authority in the absence of some indication to the contrary”: Oliveira v. Tarjay Investments Inc., reflex,  O.J. No. 1109, at para. 2 (C.A.), referring to Scherer v. Paletta, 1966 CanLII 286 (ON CA),  2 O.R. 524 (C.A.) and Mohammed v. York Fire and Casualty Insurance Co., 2006 CanLII 3954 (ON CA),  O.J. No. 547, at para. 20 (C.A.).
 A lawyer’s duty of loyalty to a client includes a duty to avoid conflicting interests. One type of prejudice from which the law of conflict of interest seeks to protect a client is the “prejudice arising where the lawyer ‘soft peddles’ his representation of a client in order to serve his own interests, those of another client, or those of a third person”: Canadian National Railway Co. v. McKercher LLP, 2013 SCC 39 (CanLII),  S.C.R. 649 (“CNR”), at para. 23.
 As regards a current client, a lawyer must not place herself in a situation that jeopardizes her effective on-going representation of the client: CNR, at para. 23. That is because “[t]here should be no room for doubt about counsel’s loyalty and dedication to the client’s case”: R. v. McCallen (1999), 1999 CanLII 3685 (ON CA), 43 O.R. (3d) 56 (C.A.), at p. 67. As well, “[w]hen a client employs an attorney, he has a right to presume, if the latter be silent on the point, that he has no engagements, which interfere, in any degree, with his exclusive devotion to the cause confided to him”: Williams v. Reed, 29 F. Cas. 1386 (Cir. Ct., D. Maine 1824), quoted with approval in Strother v. 3464920 Canada Inc., 2007 SCC 24 (CanLII),  S.C.R. 177, at para. 55.
 Although the relentless financial pressure of the business of law may tempt some lawyers to accept or hang onto mandates that impinge on their duty of loyalty to an existing client, the law is clear: “Loyalty includes putting the client’s business ahead of the lawyer’s business”: R. v. Neil, 2002 SCC 70 (CanLII),  3 S.C.R. 631, at para. 24.
 The “bright line” rule applies only where the immediate, legal interests of clients are directly adverse in the matters on which the lawyer is acting: CNR, at paras. 33 and 35.
When a situation falls outside the scope of the bright line rule for any of the reasons discussed above, the question becomes whether the concurrent representation of clients creates a substantial risk that the lawyer’s representation of the client would be materially and adversely affected. The determination of whether there exists a conflict becomes more contextual, and looks to whether the situation is “liable to create conflicting pressures on judgment” as a result of “the presence of factors which may reasonably be perceived as affecting judgment”.
 As mandataries, lawyers have a duty to avoid placing themselves in situations in which their personal interests are in conflict with those of their clients (art. 2138 para. 2 C.C.Q.). The duty to avoid conflicts of interest is a salient aspect of the duty of loyalty they owe to their clients (Canadian National Railway Co. v. McKercher LLP, 2013 SCC 39 (CanLII),  2 S.C.R. 649, at para. 19, citing R. v. Neil, 2002 SCC 70 (CanLII),  3 S.C.R. 631, at para. 19; see also C.A. reasons, at para. 94). In conjunction with the duty of commitment to the client’s cause, the duty to avoid conflicting interests ensures that “divided loyalt[ies] d[o] not cause the lawyer to ‘soft peddle’ his or her representation of a client out of concern for [other interests]” (McKercher, at para. 43, quoting Neil, at para. 19). In the same manner, the duty of loyalty shields the performance of the lawyer’s duty to advise clients from the taint of undue interference.
 A lawyer’s duty to advise is threefold, encompassing duties (1) to inform, (2) to explain, and (3) to advise in the strict sense. The duty to inform pertains to the disclosure of relevant facts; the duty to explain requires that the legal and economic consequences of a course of action be presented; and the duty to advise in the strict sense requires that a course of action be recommended (Poulin v. Pilon,  C.S. 177, at p. 180; M.-C. Thouin, “L’avocat, toujours de bon conseil?”, in Service de la formation permanente du Barreau du Québec, vol. 228, Développements récents en déontologie, droit professionnel et disciplinaire (2005), 49, at pp. 51-52).
 The duty to advise is inherent in the legal profession and exists regardless of the nature of the mandate (Baudouin, Deslauriers and Moore, at No. 2-138; Labrie v. Tremblay,  R.R.A. 5, at p. 10 (Que. C.A.)). Its exact scope depends on the circumstances, including the object of the mandate, the client’s characteristics and the expertise the lawyer claims to have in the field in question (Côté v. Rancourt, 2004 SCC 58 (CanLII),  3 S.C.R. 248, at para. 6; Thouin, at pp. 55-69).
 As no bright lines can be drawn in this regard, the case law is replete with examples of situations in which courts have had to perform the difficult task of deciding whether lawyers should, in advising their clients, have taken the initiative to go beyond what the clients specifically asked them for (see, e.g., Labrie, at p. 11; Sylvestre v. Karpinski, 2011 QCCA 2161, at para. 19 (CanLII); Daigneault v. Lapierre,  R.R.A. 902 (Que. Sup. Ct.)). One thing is clear, however: when lawyers do provide advice, they must always act in their clients’ best interests and meet the standard of the competent, prudent and diligent lawyer in the same circumstances. In this respect, I agree with the Court of Appeal that any advice lawyers give that exceeds their mandates may, if wrongful, engage their liability. Whether Mr. Salomon was acting within the limits of his mandate in providing financial advice to the respondents is therefore immaterial. He is liable for any wrongful advice he gave in that context.
. Healthy Lifestyle Medical Group Inc. v. Chand Morningside Plaza Inc.
 While this is sufficient to dispose of the award of costs, we feel compelled to address an issue that arose in the cost submissions.
There is no legal obligation on an opposing party, much less opposing counsel, to review the entire record below to determine whether, and if so what, has been omitted by the appellant from its appeal materials.
Further, assuming that the opposing party does at some later point realize that any portion of the record below has been omitted by the appellant, there is no basis upon which to require that the respondent has an affirmative obligation to supplement the record in a manner which assists the appellant.
 We reject this excessively adversarial position. In our view the issue here is not about requiring one party to assist the other, it is about counsel ensuring that the pleadings before the lower court which are germane to the issue on appeal are accurately put before this court.
 The Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, oblige the parties and their counsel to ensure that the court has before it all of the material necessary for the court to do justice. This is the intended result of the combined operation of r. 61.10 prescribing the appeal book and compendium, r. 61.12 (7) prescribing the respondent’s compendium, and r. 61.10.1 prescribing the exhibit book.
 Rule 61.10 (1) (f) obliges the appellant to include the relevant pleadings in the appeal book and compendium. No correlative duty is placed on the respondent. There is therefore a wisp of technical support for Mr. Rosenstein’s assertion, although not more than a wisp. When, for whatever reason, the appellant omits from its materials a pleading central to the decision below and the appeal, a respondent should correct this and not make arguments on the basis that the record before the lower court was different than it actually was. And when an appellant learns that its materials omitted such a pleading it should seek leave to correct the record and revise its materials, not persist in the original error. To view the matter otherwise would be to adopt an unduly technical view of the duty of counsel.
These rules shall be liberally construed to secure the just, most expeditious and least expensive determination of every civil proceeding on its merits.
 The Manitoba Court of Appeal rightly held: “[C]ompliance with the Rules is desirable not as a pedantic exercise, but as a means of properly informing the Court of the relevant facts, of directing the Court’s attention to the evidence relied upon and of defining the issues to be argued”: Kingswood Estates Inc. v. Hildebrand,  M.J. No. 645 (C.A.), at para. 6.
 Even though ours is an adversarial system, its goal is to pursue truth in the interests of justice, in order to achieve the right result in the dispute for the right reason, according to law. There are many examples of ways in which rules and practices necessarily mitigate the adversarial nature of our system of justice.
 There is no doubt that had this appeal proceeded on the basis that the the motion judge did not have before her the Amended Statement of Defence, which was the basis put forward by both the appellant and the respondent until the intervenors set the record straight, and not revised by the appellant until during oral argument, this court would have been tacitly misled on what the motion judge had before her and on the proper interpretation of her decision. This cannot be countenanced.
 A party to an appeal, led by counsel, has the obligation to provide to the court any material necessary for the court to have a full appreciation of the matter under appeal, whether or not the material supports the party’s position. In this appeal neither counsel took this obligation seriously enough after becoming aware that the Amended Statement of Defence had been omitted from their respective appeal materials.
Given the different objectives and considerations arising in the two contexts of party and party costs and solicitor account assessments, parties availing themselves of both are not pursuing inconsistent options.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.