Lawsuit against lawyers Megan McMahon, Taryn Burnett and Gowlings to proceed after lengthy delays

Update November 25, 2016: Hearing delayed again to February 2017

After lengthy delays in the case Carbone v. Megan McMahon and Gowlings, the case is scheduled to proceed with a hearing at the Court of Queen's Bench on December 15, 2016 at 10:00am.

In this case the defendants, lawyers Megan McMahon, Taryn Burnett and their law firm Gowlings, face allegations of their malicious harassment, defamation and defrauding of the plaintiff in the underlying medical malpractice case, among other egregious misconduct by the lawyers.

These are the court applications that will be heard at the scheduled hearing:

1) Plaintiff's application for recusal of the new case management judge

• Justice Earl C. Wilson was removed as case management judge in this case in January 2015 in the face of his undeniable bias, conflict of interest, and blatant judge shopping by the defendants for his assignment to the case, among other transgressions, amounting to judicial misconduct. Justice D.B. Nixon was subsequently appointed case management judge.   
• At a case management meeting in May 2015 before Justice Nixon, it was learned that Perry Mack, the lawyer for the defendants, is also Justice Nixon's personal lawyer in unrelated matters. It is a significant conflict of interest for a judge to preside over a case in which one of the parties is represented by his own personal lawyer. The circumstances warrant Justice Nixon's recusal as case management judge.

2) Defendants' application for striking

• Long after the plaintiff commenced her lawsuit with action nos. 1401-00821 and 1301-03943 against the defendants and made an application for amendments to add further allegations against them, the defendants filed an application  to strike the lawsuit in an attempt to prevent the further allegations damaging to them from being heard.
• Despite that the plaintiff's original application to amend to add further allegations has always been allowed to be heard since December 2013, and was filed long before the defendants filed an application to strike, defence counsel told Justice Nixon that they were somehow entitled to have their application to strike heard first, in their attempt to deprive the plaintiff of her right to have her important amendments heard. 
• Also concerning is that the applications for recusal and striking are being heard at the same time. The recusal application should be heard independently and dealt with first.

3) Plaintiff's application for amendments

• As of December 2016, the plaintiff's original application for amendments will have been in waiting for an astounding three years since December 2013, in large part due to the defendants' ongoing unreasonable delays. 
• The plaintiff's application for amendments also includes proposed amendments with further allegations against the defendants filed in February 2014, July 2014, December 2014 and January 2015. In addition, new proposed amendments will be filed with allegations arising from the defendant lawyers' unlawful obtaining of the plaintiff's credit report and other transgressions that have come to light over the past year. 

The plaintiff's brief for these applications, which will include the plaintiff's grounds for recusal and amendments, and further details of the defendant lawyers' misconduct, will be posted on this blog when available.