Lawyer suspended after senior targeted

MONTREAL•AMONTREAL lawyer has been suspended from practice for his role in an effort to force an 89-yearold woman from her home and have her declared mentally unfit.

Charles Gelber will serve an 18-month suspension after pleading guilty to seven disciplinary infractions involving Veronika Piela.

The lawyer’s actions “were a direct infringement of Mrs. Piela’s fundamental rights,” the Quebec Bar Association’s disciplinary committee ruled. “She was deprived of her freedom, forced to leave her home and taken by force into a private seniors’ residence.”

In 2013, Gelber was hired by Anita Obodzinski, who worked for Piela but falsely claimed to be her niece, to prepare a request to have Piela declared mentally unfit and to have Obodzinski placed in charge of her affairs.

The request Gelber wrote was supported by a medical report from Dr. Lindsay Goldsmith indicating Piela suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and by a report from social worker Alissa Kerner, who is Gelber’s wife. Quebec Superior Court would later find the request to be false.

Igor Dogaru, Piela’s lawyer, said Goldsmith’s medical report indicated that Piela

SHE WAS DEPRIVED OF HER FREEDOM.

was incapable of taking care of herself. A subsequent report found the opposite — “that she was totally capable of taking care of herself, she had an excellent memory, (and) she didn’t have Alzheimer’s,” Dogaru said.

In a decision dated Sept. 27, the committee found Gelber did not bother to inform Piela or her lawyer that a court judgment had declared her legally incompetent.

It also found he did not advise Dogaru that a request was made to remove Piela from her home and into a seniors’ residence.

“The police officers came to the house, they entered by the back door, so she started to scream and so the police officers called an ambulance and covered her mouth,” Dogaru said Monday in an interview.

The decision says Gelber, who was holding Piela’s savings in trust, transferred $100,000 from Piela’s account to Obodzinski. The money was later reimbursed.

Obodzinski and her husband, Arthur Trzciakowski, pleaded guilty in January to their roles in defrauding the elderly woman. Obodzinski was sentenced to two years house arrest and Trzciakowski received a conditional discharge.

Kerner received a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to mischief and being unlawfully in Piela’s home. She was also suspended by Quebec’s order of social workers.