Throwback Thursday: the Hot Nasties
Ras Pierre Schenk and Winkie Nuclear Age Smith of the Hot Nasties at Bishop Carroll High, Calgary, Alberta, June 1979.
I hate greedy lawyers
Crass, misleading advertising. Lousy advice and representation. Disgusting, usurious fees.
These are some of the things that have helped to destroy the reputation of trial lawyers – even among those of us who used to be trial lawyers. I’ve written about this many times before.
For months, the Toronto Star’s Michele Henry and Kenyon Wallace have been hammering ambulance-chasing, bottom-feeding members of the “personal injury bar” (that’s what they call themselves, without irony). They have done an amazing job, and deserve a Michener nomination for it.
This morning, they revealed this:
Meanwhile, at Queen’s Park, Liberal MPP Mike Colle (Eglinton-Lawrence), inspired in part by the Star’s investigation, tabled a private member’s bill calling for all contingency fees to be capped at 15 per cent of the settlements awarded to accident victims.
Titled the Personal Injury and Accident Victims Protection Act, the bill requires contingency fee agreements to state clearly how lawyers will get paid, calls for a ban on lawyer referral fees, and makes all advertising by personal injury lawyers subject to pre-approval by the Law Society of Upper Canada. In addition, clients who have signed up with a personal injury lawyer would be granted a 10-day cooling-off period in which to cancel their agreement. The Law Society of Upper Canada recently made a series of recommendations regarding the same subject.
Private member’s bills rarely become law but Colle said the idea is to raise awareness of issues he is hearing about from accident victims and “put heat on the government to do something in this area.”
“For these accident victims who have been essentially hit twice, I’m trying to protect them,” Colle said.
Hit Twice is right. Various PC and Liberal MPPs have been musing about this kind of move for a while, but it has taken Mike Colle – who, in my experience, has guts to spare and isn’t afraid of the Greedy Lawyer Lobby – to do what Liberal, PC and/or NDP governments should have done long ago.
I’m a lawyer, and I’m fed up with innocent accident victims getting hit twice. And I’m fed up with the appalling greed that has helped to destroy the reputation of a once-great profession.
Want to get yourselves (re)elected, political parties? This is the kind of populist stuff that’ll do it. Every time.
An open letter to Ontario Liberal mutineers
Dear Mutineers:
My experience is that this sort of thing doesn’t ever work. If leaders are going to take a walk in the snow, you gotta let ’em do it on their own, boys and girls.
My Boss would’ve left a lot sooner if the Martinite minions hadn’t tried to force him out. And then, when Team Juggernaut finally got in, all they’d succeeded in doing was blowing to bits the most successful political party in Western democracy. Prime Minister Blip, bon soir.
(And, is it deeply ironic that the Martinite campaign folks who tanked the party in Ottawa are the selfsame Martinite campaign folks who are now tanking the party in Toronto? Why, yes. Yes, it is indeed ironic.)
Anyway. Will Kathleen Wynne go? Beats me. But it’s up to her. My hunch: if the 25 per cent Hydro cut – and the balanced budget, and various other budgetary goodies – don’t move the needle in the right direction, she won’t want to go down with the ship. Who would?
That said, Crawley is below, and the link to this (clumsy) web site is here.
Here is the message from unnamed Liberals calling on Premier @Kathleen_Wynne to resign for the good of the party https://t.co/m1mptEXyL2
— Mike Crawley (@CBCQueensPark) March 8, 2017
Today’s book purchases
Mad Max’s pals
This week’s column: he’s just visiting, too
Spring 2009: the tulips were blooming, the birds were chirping, and Ottawa was buzzing about the prospects of Prime Minister Michael Ignatieff.
The polls looked good. The pundits were saying nice things. Stephen Harper’s regime was slipping.
Liberals were accordingly feeling optimistic, so they threw a little party. Staff moved the long tables out of the boardroom in Centre Block’s Room 409-S, and caucus and staff were invited to pop by for a drink. A smiling Ignatieff worked the room, clapping Liberal MPs on the back and listening attentively to Liberal staffers.
He approached Yours Truly, positioned by one of the windows overlooking Centre Block’s lawn. “You look unhappy!” Ignatieff said.
“Happiness is a trick,” I said to the Liberal leader, which made him laugh. I paused. “The Tories have been too quiet about you. I don’t like it.”
“Stop worrying so much,” Ignatieff said, smiling, and then moved away to chat with others.
It was his party, in more ways than one, so I didn’t try to spoil it on that sunny day. I was a bit of an outsider, a hired gun, so I didn’t then tell Ignatieff what I had been told by Conservative friends earlier: that they were getting ready to spend millions on an ad buy to define Ignatieff before he could define himself. They were going to say he was an interloper, a foreigner. They were going to say — over and over, everywhere — that he was “just visiting.”
When I briefed Ignatieff later on — with his worried Chief of Staff, Ian Davey, listening in — he was dismissive. “A million Canadians live and work outside of Canada,” he said, irritated.
“None of them are running to be prime minister,” I said, as Davey nodded. “Lots of people think that anyone who wants to run a country should live in that country, you know.”
Ignatieff didn’t buy it. It won’t work, he said.
It did.
The Conservatives’ anti-Ignatieff “Just Visiting” campaign was arguably the most effective political ad campaign in modern Canadian history. I can’t think of another that has worked nearly as well. “Just Visiting” indelibly branded the acclaimed Harvard intellectual as an effete, out-of-touch tourist to Canada. It destroyed him and the once-great Liberal Party of Canada, reducing it to third place, a rump in the House of Commons.
You know where this is going, perhaps. It is astonishing — it is beyond belief — that the once-great Conservative Party of Canada is now embracing Kevin O’Leary, another Boston resident. Another interloper. Another guy “just visiting.”
The evidence that Kevin O’Leary is just visiting Canada, you see, is indisputable.
- There have been 11 Conservative leadership debates since early November. O’Leary has shown up for only three, claiming that he had business to attend to in the U.S.
- On his own reality TV show and in interviews with U.S. media, O’Leary has clearly stated that “Boston is home” — quote unquote.
- O’Leary has lived in Boston for a generation and he won’t commit to living in Canada — even if he wins the CPC leadership.
- Before his leadership bid, his LinkedIn page listed Boston as his home. Before that, it was Palm Beach. Now he claims it’s Toronto.
Forget about the fact that Kevin O’Leary — like that other reality TV star, Donald Trump — isn’t really a conservative, and is all over the map ideologically. Forget about the fact that — like Trump — O’Leary is a vulgarian and a creep, grabbing women, mocking women, dismissing women.
Forget about the fact that he is — as the National Post’s Andrew Coyne called him — “a clown,” a caricature who has never held political office, and who doesn’t have a single coherent policy. Forget about the fact that he doesn’t speak a word of French. Forget about all that.
Kevin O’Leary is the Conservative Michael Ignatieff. If mass delusional psychosis continues to beset paid-up Conservative members, and if they actually select Kevin O’Leary to lead them, the attack ads practically write themselves. Just PhotoShop O’Leary’s shining pate over Ignatieff’s face and run those Conservative Party ads all over again. They’ll work.
Kevin O’Leary, like Michael Ignatieff, is just visiting Canada. As leader, Kevin O’Leary will lead the Conservatives to their greatest defeat since 1993 — ironically, the very year he commenced his move to Boston, Mass.
Oh, and Team O’Leary? Michael Ignatieff at least had the intelligence to move back to Canada before offering himself as its leader.
Still didn’t work.
Day Without A Woman
At Daisy Group, on Wednesday, we are going to be participating in the Day Without A Woman, as urged by the Women’s March. The women in our firm will therefore decide whether they want to be at work or not.
If you are interested in learning more, information is here:
- Women take the day off, from paid and unpaid labor
- Avoid shopping for one day (with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses).
- Wear RED in solidarity with A Day Without A Woman
In which the United States, 2017, becomes Germany, 1941
Highly-scientific poll™: will the Hydro cut work?
Vote now, vote often!
Ontario's 25 per cent #Hydro cut will make the government:
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) March 3, 2017
You couldn’t pay us to buy it, actually
Spotted by a friend at Washington’s Dulles airport. Sorry, Unpresident Trump: nobody wants you.
