In response to the Law Society of Alberta complaint allegations served against defendant lawyer Megan McMahon, she has acknowledged that her law firm Gowlings did indeed pull the opposing plaintiff/complainant's credit report without the plaintiff's consent. This is one of a number of misconduct issues Ms. McMahon faces before the Law Society.
Under Alberta legislation, the act of pulling a credit report without consent and without meeting conditions set out in the Alberta Fair Trading Act and Alberta Personal Information Protection Act is considered a serious violation of those acts and illegal. Courts frequently award damages for this violation, as in the unrelated case of Chitrakar v. Bell TV, 2013 FC 1103 where the Federal Court described a company's unlawful credit check and violation of privacy as reprehensible. A law firm that violates the law should be treated no differently, and this includes a law firm attempting to search out assets of an opposing party.
In admitting to the pulling of the plaintiff's credit report, Ms. McMahon attempted to somehow justify the breach with the excuse that they made a court motion for security for costs, which they in fact lost, in the underlying medical malpractice case. Security for costs motions are a common tactic by law firms to attempt to halt lawsuits. Not only did the court dismiss Ms. McMahon's motion for security for costs because it had no merit, Alberta legislation only allows for pulling of a credit report as part of legal proceedings in the rare circumstance that a court actually makes a specific order for such, which certainly did not happen here.
The admission by Ms. McMahon alluded to a "colleague" being involved in the credit report pull. Whether the colleague referred to is Taryn Burnett, whose removal as defence counsel in the underlying case was at about the same time as the credit report pull, will also be determined in court proceedings and the Law Society complaint earlier made against Ms. Burnett.
While an illegal credit report pull is by itself a serious breach of Alberta legislation, it is particularly serious here as it relates to the allegations of fraud in the lawsuit currently in progress against defendants Ms. McMahon, Ms. Burnett and Gowlings. After a long delay, court proceedings are scheduled to resume in June 2016.
Update: In yet another delay in the lawsuit against the defendant lawyers, court proceedings have been rescheduled from June 2016 to December 2016, prolonging the plaintiff's wait for justice.
