Lawyer previously represented D’Angelo

A lawyer hired to advise Niagara regional council on the ongoing debate over how CAO Carmen D’Angelo was hired in 2016 previously represented him in a high profile and controversial defamation suit, The Standard has learned.

During a marathon closeddoor meeting Thursday, councillors received advice from lawyer Paul DeMelo, a lawyer at the Toronto firm of Kagan Shastri and formerly the lawyer for the City of Mississauga.

DeMelo was one of the lawyers who represented D’Angelo and Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority during its failed $100,000 defamation suit against St. Catharines activist Ed Smith.

DeMelo was part of the legal team that ended up being paid more than $70,000 to represent Conservation Authority during the Smith lawsuit.

The NPCA claimed Smith defamed the agency in a report he published in 2016 that was highly critical of the authority.

The judge in the case, Justice James Ramsey, dismissed NPCA’s case and awarded $131,000 in legal costs to Smith. The NPCA said later it spent a total of $146,000 on its own legal costs.

Ramsey ruled that the NPCA case had no merit, that a government agency cannot sue a private citizen and that while Smith made some errors in his report, he did not do so out of malice and presented his conclusions based on the best information he had at the time.

The NPCA’s response to Smith, Ramsay said, was akin to “the opening salvo of a war” and not in keeping with the Canadian tradition of free speech.

“There are many places in the world where I might expect such a thing to happen, but not in our beloved dominion,” Ramsay said in his ruling.

DeMelo was hired by the Region to provide advice to councillors during Thursday’s special council meeting that was called to deal with issues surrounding the tainted 2016 CAO hiring process and what role the office of regional chair Alan Caslin may have played in that process.

Regional spokesman Peter Criscione said DeMelo was hired by the municipal corporation because he “focuses on all aspects of municipal and land-use and planning law.”