A bitter fight among firefighters over fate of settlement money
Multimillion-dollar legal battle drags on in court over funds for families of those who died
First they fought fires, then they fought cancers.
Now they’re fighting among themselves in a bitter legal battle over millions of dollars — a battle that grows uglier and more acrimonious as thousands of pages of court documents pile up.
On one side is the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association (OPFFA), which represents more than 10,000 active firefighters across the province. On the other side are Hamilton firefighter Colin Grieve and a Toronto firefighter named Paul Atkinson. For years, they helped victims settle claims with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
Grieve was one of the hundreds of Hamilton firefighters who battled the notorious Plastimet blaze two decades ago. He then became an advocate for colleagues stricken with work-related cancers, sought after for his expertise in navigating the bureaucracy of the WSIB claims process.
The two sides are now fighting over what has happened to some of the settlement money that has gone, in many of the cases, to the widows and families of firefighters who died from illnesses linked to their jobs.
So far, there has been a $4-million lawsuit filed by the OPFFA against Grieve and Atkinson, a $12-million countersuit filed by the two firefighters against the OPFFA and its former president, Carmen Santoro, and a total of eight criminal charges laid by Halton police against Grieve and Atkinson.
The OPFFA alleges the two firefighters “misappropriated” at least $3 million that should have gone to the association while Grieve and Atkinson claim their actions were condoned by the OPFFA.
Each side has declared the other’s actions and statements to be some combination of “outrageous,” “malicious,” “scandalous” and “defamatory.”
On Thursday and Friday, a judge will be asked to rule on five separate motions clogging the arteries of the civil cases as the legal battle becomes uglier and more acrimonious.
The two most crucial motions are an attempt by Grieve and Atkinson to have the OPFFA’s lawsuit dismissed, or failing that, to have the civil suits put aside until the criminal charges are resolved.
“Our clients want to deal with these issues but fighting a two-fronted battle on the same issues at the same time is unfair,” said Gavin Tighe, a Toronto lawyer representing Grieve and Atkinson in the civil cases.
“Our clients believe there is no merit in either of the cases,” Tighe added.
On Feb. 28, Halton police laid four criminal charges each against Grieve and Atkinson — two counts each of fraud over $5,000, and single counts of attempting to obstruct justice and money laundering.
Grieve and Atkinson have already failed in their attempt to take the extraordinary step of forcing three of the OPFFA’s lawyers to get on the witness stand and provide evidence against their client in the civil lawsuit.
The two firefighters have raised concerns about the “unusually close” relationship between the OPFFA’s lawyers and Halton police.
Grieve and Atkinson have also taken the inflammatory step of threatening to name two of the OPFFA’s lawyers as defendants in a malicious prosecution action if the criminal charges are withdrawn or dismissed at a trial.
None of the allegations made so far in the OPFFA’s statement of claim, the counterclaim of Grieve and Atkinson, or the various filed affidavits have been proven in court.
A pretrial conference on the criminal charges will continue on Nov. 16.
Rahool Agarwal, the lead lawyer for the OPFFA, declined to comment on the case because the matter is still before the court.
The OPFFA’s lawsuit was launched in the spring of 2016, but the story starts 20 years ago in the wake of the Plastimet fire, one of Hamilton’s worst environmental nightmares.
A toxic soup of chemicals from the burning plastics left a number of the firefighters stricken with long-term illnesses, including elevated rates of cancers.
Following an appearance on CBC’s The Fifth Estate in late 1997 to discuss the Plastimet fire, Grieve began informally helping other firefighters, retirees or their families advance claims for occupational illnesses.
By the late 1990s, Grieve and Atkinson were appointed to the OPFFA’s WSIB committee.
What complicated the matter was the fact many of the WSIB claims needing assistance were coming from retirees or their families and they weren’t members of the OPFFA, which represents active firefighters.
By 2004, the association established the Retirees Cancer Claim Fund (RCCF), which started with $20,000 in seed money from the OPFFA to help with the process of submitting claims.
The association decided to also seek voluntary donations from retired firefighters or their beneficiaries, paid as a percentage of a WSIB settlement.
The OPFFA drew up a letter of agreement and if a successful claimant decided to make a contribution, they were asked to donate 1.5 per cent of the settlement to help the association continue representing others.
But the fund couldn’t keep up with the requests for assistance.
By 2005, the OPFFA had increased the suggested donation amount to 3 per cent of the settlement and then to 5 per cent in 2007. The association also introduced a $1-per-month levy on its members in 2006 that has generated more than $1 million for the retirees’ cancer fund.
In 2005, the OPFFA decided to for- malize the roles of Grieve and Atkinson. Their full-time job was to represent active and retired firefighters or their families as they made claims for workplace-related illnesses.
Grieve and Atkinson continued to be paid their regular salaries by their respective municipalities and the OPFFA paid the costs of substitute firefighters to cover the shifts that Grieve and Atkinson would normally take.
The OPFFA also paid Grieve and Atkinson’s expenses and daily per diems in some cases, along with annual honoraria.
Abalance sheet filed in court by the OPFFA shows it paid out $1.37 million in expenses related to Grieve and Atkinson over a nine-year period from June 2006 through May 2015.
The expenses included $216,000 in mileage charges and $46,500 for cellphones. The allegations In 2015, the association began to have concerns about the “conduct” of Grieve and Atkinson, according to its statement of claim.
The association alleges some of the donation money from successful WSIB claimants that should have gone to the OPFFA was instead being kept by the two firefighters.
From 2004 through 2015, Atkinson and Grieve represented more than 230 claimants, leading to over $80 million in total WSIB payouts. “However the OPFFA received just over $600,000 in donations to the RCCF over that same time period, or approximately 0.7 per cent,” the association alleges.
The OPFFA alleges that Atkinson and Grieve “misappropriated” at least $3 million in donations. That’s on top of the expenses, honoraria and regular salaries that were already paid to them.
In 2005, Grieve and Atkinson created a company called Professional Firefighters Advocates Inc., which they allegedly referred to at times as PFFA “in an effort to confuse claim recipients into believing they were agreeing to contribute monies to the OPFFA,” according to the statement of claim.
The OPFFA alleges Grieve and Atkinson developed “copycat” letters of agreement for claimants to sign that replicated “almost verbatim” the OPFFA’s agreement but instead directed donations be made out to “PFFA” — an acronym they used to refer to their company.
The court filings include examples of invoices provided to claimants’ families. On some, the “O” from OPFFA is missing but the address below “PFFA” is the Plains Rd. location of the actual OPFFA headquarters in Burlington.
There are notations to “Make all cheques payable to Professional Fire Fighters Advocates Inc.” and that cheques should be mailed to a Stoney Creek, Ont., address that appears to be Grieve’s home.
The OPFFA states it received a complaint from Bev Bamlett, the widow of a deceased firefighter. Atkinson had helped handle her WSIB claim and she was concerned about his conduct, according to the documents.
The OPFFA filed text messages that purport to show Atkinson soliciting Bamlett to pay him for the work he did preparing her claim.
In notes provided to the OPFFA by Bamlett, she said she wanted to donate $7,500 from the settlement.
She asked if she should make the cheque out to OPFFA but Atkinson said, “No, he has a company for that,” she alleges.
She was particularly upset that Atkinson seemed to consider a successful settlement similar to a lottery win.
“Paul mentioned lottery so many times,” Bamlett wrote. “The settle- ment is not a lottery win. I lost my husband and my daughters lost their father.”
The OPFFA alleges Atkinson and Grieve asked some claimants to sign confidentiality agreements and asked some “to destroy all documents related to their claim after the fact.”
Last October, current OPFFA president Rob Hyndman filed an affidavit outlining a number of cases where the association believes financial irregularities took place.
There was the case of London, Ont., firefighter Jack Kellum, now deceased, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour. After the claim was settled, his wife made two payments — one for $2,200 made out to the OPFFA and a second donation for $8,588.50, “to an organization called ‘PFFA,’ ” according to a statement filed in court by Kellum’s wife, Nancy.
“Jack thought it was strange that we would be asked to make those two separate donations and questioned Colin about it,” Nancy Kellum stated.
“Colin never indicated that PFFA was a company that he owned and operated,” she alleges. “It was not our intention that this money would be received by Paul or Colin personally or any company under their control.”
There was the case of Caledon firefighter James Martin, who died of esophageal cancer. His daughter Nora attempted to make a donation of nearly $30,000 to the OPFFA.
According to a witness statement by Martin filed in court, Atkinson told her to make the cheque payable to “PFFA.”
“It was not my understanding that our donation was made to compensate Paul or his company in any way,” Martin wrote. “It was my intention that the money ultimately go to the OPFFA.”
The OPFFA alleges the two firefighters committed breach of fiduciary duty, breach of trust, false misrepresentation, breach of contract and unjust enrichment, among other acts.
“The defendants’ actions were outrageous, malicious and high-handed,” the association alleges. “Their motive was to dupe retired firefight- ers suffering from life-threatening illnesses, and their families, out of money they agreed to give to the OPFFA.”
The two firefighters deny the OPFFA’s allegations and state in their defence that they never engaged “in any fraudulent scheme, conspiracy or subterfuge.”
“The allegations in the statement of claim to this effect are purposefully scandalous,” they claim in their statement of defence.
Grieve and Atkinson state that the OPFFA couldn’t provide the name of a single victim and the “true purpose” of the association’s lawsuit “is to gain monetary benefit for the OPFFA and its current executive,” they allege.
What’s more, they allege, the OPFFA condoned the compensation arrangements between the WSIB claimants and the two firefighters “as long as it continued to receive a percentage of the proceeds of such efforts.
“It was only after (Grieve and Atkinson) decided to break ties with the OPFFA, and in the face of a loss of revenue to which the OPFFA had no legal entitlement in the first place, that the OPFFA suddenly began to take issue with these defendants’ work on behalf of claimants,” their statement of defence alleges.
“The families and firefighters assisted by these defendants were fully aware of and agreed to compensate them for their efforts,” Grieve and Atkinson claim, “at a fraction of the cost that a paralegal or lawyer would have charged.”
The two firefighters launched a counterclaim against the OPFFA and its former president Carmen Santoro, seeking $5 million in damages and $1 million in punitive damages against each for unlawful interference of economic interest, abuse of process, defamation and intentional infliction of mental distress.
Atkinson and Grieve allege that Santoro “embarked on a malicious smear campaign” designed to harm their integrity and damage their reputations.
“(We) have been subject to embarrassment, scorn and ridicule,” the two firefighters claim.
The OPFFA alleges Colin Grieve and Paul Atkinson developed ‘copycat’ letters of agreement for claimants to sign that replicated ‘almost verbatim’ the OPFFA’s agreement but instead directed donations be made out to ‘PFFA’ — an acronym they used to refer to their company