Winnipeg attack, Quebec murders a stark reminder of risks to lawyers

A lawyer and a notary are found shot in their Quebec office. Both later died.

The next day, a bomb explodes in a Winnipeg law office, critically injuring a family lawyer.

These recent attacks serve as a stark reminder of the violence that can be directed toward lawyers and legal professionals, industry insiders say. And family lawyers face the greatest risk.

“In family situations… we’re assisting people who are at some of the lowest points in their lives,” says Patricia Hebert, chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s national family law section.

Relationship breakdown is a high-risk time for domestic violence, she tells Yahoo Canada News.

“The family lawyer steps into that circle of risk at times and can become part of the target,” Hebert says.

“For people who practice family law exclusively, most of us have a story or two about someone who has threatened us. It’s pretty common,” she says.

“I had somebody who threatened to kill himself in court with me, for my benefit, specifically targeting me,” she says.

Fortunately, those threats are often made in the heat of the moment and there is no intention to follow through. But not always.

“The problem is you don’t always know which is which,” she says. “Some people threaten and never carry it out and some people never make the threat but act out.”

The Alberta branch of the bar association has recirculated a “Personal Safety Handbook” as a result of the bomb that injured Maria Mitousis in Winnipeg last Friday.

“Incidents of threats to personal safety seem to be on the rise,” it says.

The book contains some chilling advice, including what to do if they are shot at and what to tell their children if they think the threat targets them.

A 2006 article published in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice says almost 60 per cent of lawyers have been threatened. Among criminal defence lawyers alone that jumps to 73 per cent; Crown prosecutors, 82 per cent; and family lawyers, 86 per cent.

The study from Simon Fraser University was based on surveys of 1,152 lawyers in Metro Vancouver.

Only 23 per cent of those who said they’d been threatened reported those incidents to police.

High-profile defence lawyer Clayton Ruby has received hundreds of threats over the course of his career.

“It happens regularly,” he says.

His long list of clients include wrongfully convicted Donald Marshall Jr. and Guy Paul Morin; the surviving Dionne quintuplets; the Church of Scientology; Ben Levin, Ontario’s former deputy education minister charged with child porn; and Omar Khadr’s brother Abdurahman Khadr.

“We get lots of threats but no harm,” Ruby tells Yahoo Canada News. “I think once somebody tore up some shrubs on my lawn and painted a swastika. That was 25 years ago or something.”

The exception is in family law.

“Most serious problems that lawyers are facing are in family law,” Ruby says. “That’s where the highest emotions and the craziness comes out.”

In the case of Mitousis, a family law practitioner, the ex-husband of a former client has been charged in her attack. Two other bombs were intercepted by police on the weekend.

Guido Amsel, 49, is charged with two counts of attempted murder, one count of aggravated assault and eight other charges.

In the case of Benoît Côté and Marie-Josée Sills, after they were found shot in their Terrebonne, Que., law office, police found Michel Dubuc dead in his nearby home, alongside his 19- and 21-year-old sons in an apparent murder-suicide. Police have not confirmed a link but Dubuc had filed a $1.2 million lawsuit against Côté, an intellectual property lawyer.

Hebert says these incidents — particularly the attack on Mitousis — suggest the adversarial nature of family law needs to be reformed.

“We have a lot of people who are in a great state of despair because of what’s happened in their families,” she says.

She says the justice system needs systemic change toward a more collaborative, mediation-style approach.

“If their marriage had to end, then they want a way to resolve it that doesn’t result in a knock ‘em down, drag ‘em out fight,” Hebert says.

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