Halifax lawyer Howe ghting disbarment
Halifax lawyer Lyle Howe is seeking a judicial review of a Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society disciplinary panel’s recent decision to disbar him.
In a notice led Monday in Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Howe claims the bar society and the hearing panel “failed to observe a principle of fundamental justice, procedural fairness or other procedure that (they were) required by law to observe.”
Howe, who turned 33 on Wednesday, graduated from Dalhousie University’s Schulich law school in Halifax in 2009 and was called to the Nova Scotia bar in 2010.
The bar society announced in June 2015 that Howe was facing allegations of professional misconduct and professional incompetence stemming from his legal practice between 2011 and 2014. A disciplinary hearing got underway in December 2015 and became the longest and most expensive in Nova Scotia history, sitting for about 60 days over 18 months and generating 10,000 pages of transcripts.
Howe, who is black, argued throughout the hearing that he was the victim of racial discrimination. He claimed he was singled out over the 40 di erent allegations, which included him missing court appointments, booking himself into multiple courts at the same time, and misleading the court about a client’s absence or other issues.
e three-member panel found Howe guilty this July of multiple counts of misconduct and incompetence.
The panel handed down its penalty of disbarment in October and also ordered Howe to pay the society $150,000 in costs before he can apply to regain his status as a lawyer in ve years.
In this week’s ling to the Supreme Court, Howe says the panel imposed “an unfit and unreasonably disproportionate sentence that failed to give due regard to the (Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and its principles and spirit.”
He wants a judge to quash the panel’s convictions and either acquit him or order a new hearing.
In the alternative, Howe seeks to have the panel’s sanctions overturned and new penalties imposed by the court.
Howe will appear before a judge Dec. 19 to have a date set for the review. He will also ask for a temporary stay of enforcement of the sanctions.