Achkar Law, the $9,000,000 Claim
Rami Madhoun
Teams Voice Administrator @ Confidential | Microsoft Modern Workplace, Microsoft Products
On Friday, March 22, 2024, I published an open letter to Mr. Doug Downey, the Attorney General of Ontario, when I expressed concerns about the lack of procedural fairness at the Divisional Court in Ottawa. The next Monday, March 25, 2024, I noticed that a claim was filed at the Ottawa Superior Court of Justice by ACHKAR LAW, which is managed by Mr. Christopher Achkar. I haven't been served with the Statement of the Claim ("SoC"), yet; but I have contacted the court and asked for a copy of the documents used to commence the proceeding. Upon reviewing the SoC, I found out that Mr. Christopher Achkar believes he is entitled to $9,000,000 for the "damages" caused to his law firm due to a couple of reviews I posted on LinkedIn and Google/Facebook. That is even though everything mentioned in the reviews was based on facts and I didn't express any opinion about him as an individual, or his firm aside from the fact that I described the billing scheme adopted by his firm to be "unique". In reality, the decision to file this claim wasn't taken by Mr. Christopher Achkar, it was part of the series of instructions that were passed over to him by members of the Ministry of the Attorney General ("MAG"), in an attempt to have me settle or dismiss the Judicial Review ("JR"), that is scheduled to be heard before the Divisional Court in Ottawa, on May 21, 2024. The MAG, under the leadership of the Attorney General, has been committing multiple retaliation actions against me, because of the Judicial Review ("JR"):
Madhoun vs Whitten & Lublin PC; which included
Mr. Doug Downey doesn't seem to like the fact that the Affidavit of Rami Madhoun, which was admitted as part of the JR, describes how court recordings have been tampered with, a senior member of the judiciary has interfered with the proceeding(s) before the Small Claims Court in Toronto, to the point of deciding the outcome of the hearing(s), before it even started, and how Authorized Court Transcriptionist(s) get influenced, by members of his ministry, in the production of court transcripts.
The Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Justice (SCJ)
Furthermore, the timing of the claim makes me believe there is another reason behind filing such a claim. That is related to the Honourable Geoffrey Morawetz, the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Justice ("Chief Justice"). Although the Chief Justice has played a role in the interference I mentioned in previous articles, I chose not to publish any of the relevant details, until now. Despite all the challenges I have been facing, I think it is important for the public to have some trust in the justice system. Now that the ("MAG") and senior members of the judiciary have arranged for such a claim to be filed, I think I am at liberty to share more details about how justice is being administered in Ontario. Back on September 25, 2023, I filed a complaint with the office of the Chief Justice about the conduct of multiple judiciary officers, one of them being the Honourable Laura Ntoukas ("MJ Ntoukas"), the Small Claims Court Administrative Judge. The Chief Justice is required, by law, to consider such complaint, and form a committee to investigate my concerns. Section 87.3(1) of the Courts of Justice Act stipulates:
87.3 (1) Any person may make a complaint alleging misconduct by the Small Claims Court Administrative Judge to the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Justice. 2017, c. 20, Sched. 2, s. 5
Dismissal - (2) The Chief Justice shall review the complaint and may dismiss it without further investigation if, in his or her opinion, it is frivolous or an abuse of process, or concerns a minor matter to which an appropriate response has already been given. 2017, c. 20, Sched. 2, s. 5.
My complaint was not frivolous, an abuse of process; nor did it concern a 'minor matter'. If the Chief Justice were to honor the letter and principles of the law, a committee must be formed to investigate my complaint.
However, the Chief Justice chose to ignore my complaint for over six months. After sending multiple follow-ups, and after publishing An Open Letter to the Attorney General of Ontario, I received a letter from Ms. Rosemarie Juginovic ("Juginovic"), Executive Legal Officer, Office of the Chief Justice, where she mentioned the following: "Your complaint was incorrectly routed and only recently came to the attention of the Chief Justice". That wasn't true. A copy of Ms. Juginovic's letter is presented below:
The response I sent to the office of the Chief Justice was:
The Statement of Claim
It is worth highlighting some sections of the SoC so the public can see the irony of the justice system in Ontario:
If Mr. Christopher Achkar believes that charging someone $650/hr for scanning and organization is an ethical practice, this wouldn't be a legal dispute. Rather, he needs to pick a dictionary and look up the meaning of ethical vs unethical.
Google has suppressed the ("Review") referred to above, in response to what I am sure was a request from the MAG. After I sent communications to Google where I showed that there was nothing illegal about the Review, they silently re-instated the review:
Breaching the privacy of one of its clients and disclosing information protected by attorney-client privilege is against the Rules of Professional Conduct of the Law Society of Ontario ("LSO"). And the billing practices followed by ACHKAR LAW are neither ethical nor professional. Those are facts, they are not opinions that are subject to debate or argument.
领英推荐
Anyone who publishes a post or article on social or professional media will be interested in reaching a wider audience. This is just the nature of social media.
Here Mr. Christopher Achkar claims that I mentioned that he has control over the MAG. None of the articles I authored makes this claim. On the contrary, Mr. Christopher Achkar, when it comes to the instructions he has been getting from the MAG, does not have control over his firm actions, including the filing of the SoC.
Mr. Christopher Achkar should know that we don't live in North Korea. Mr. Doug Downey has changed the manner in which the Chief Justice of the Ontario Court of Justice is selected, without regard to multiple concerns that were made by former senior members of the judiciary. Mr. Doug Ford had recently made the news when he insisted on picking 'like-minded' judges. I suggest that Mr. Christopher Achkar follows the news more closely.
It is the other way around...
Mr. Christopher Achkar doesn't appear to have the power to control his law firm's operations, due to the influence of specific members of the MAG. So the claim that he has power over a multi-billion organization like Google, is laughable.
There is an easy fix for Mr. Christopher Achkar to mitigate the alleged "damages" caused to his law firm. He can stop charging clients unlawfully, stop filing claims on the instructions of specific members of the MAG, and conduct his business by the applicable laws and regulations.
Yet again, it is the other way around.
Concluding Remarks
Over the coming few days, I will be published a couple of articles, related to ACHKAR LAW:
I will conclude this article by listing a portion of one of the applications filed by a former client of ACHKAR LAW. I think it speaks volumes to the legitimacy of the points I mentioned in my Review and describes the kind of practices adopted by Mr. ACHKAR LAW and his team: