How Rude! Incivility And The Groia Appeal

That loud whirring you heard earlier this week? It was the sound of Ontario's 50,000 (or so) lawyers collectively printing the 169-page, 445-paragraph decision in Groia v The Law Society of Upper Canada. The case has been breathlessly reported on by newspapers, bloggers and the legal press, so the facts should be well known. Joseph Groia, a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada and a leading barrister, was disciplined in 2012 for uncivil conduct during his defence of Bernard Felderhof on quasi-criminal charges of violating Ontario's Securities Act. The trial, which lasted 160 days over seven years, and included a mid-trial appeal (on Groia's uncivil conduct), was, in the words of Justice Cronk, "complex, protracted and exceptionally acrimonious". Felderhof was acquitted. Subsequently, the Law Society commenced a discipline proceeding against Groia, alleging that his conduct during the trial was rude, improper and disruptive—in a word, he was uncivil.