U of M ex-dean should be disbarred: law society

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This article was published 23/01/2024 (648 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Law Society of Manitoba is requesting the disbarment of an ex-law dean and seeking $36,000 to cover the cost of a recent disciplinary hearing held to weigh accusations of professional misconduct against him.

“You don’t get to do the kinds of deliberate, planned, morally reprehensible, fraudulent things that (Jonathan Black-Branch) did and call yourself a member of this profession,” said Rocky Kravetsky, counsel for the regulatory college, as he appealed to a disciplinary panel on Tuesday.

Kravetsky argued that revoking Black-Branch’s licence to practise law locally is the only appropriate response to the former academic administrator’s pattern of unprofessionalism.

The regulatory body is also seeking compensation for the time required to investigate hundreds of pages of written documents, the length of proceedings – which spanned a cumulative total of seven days of public hearings, including Tuesday – and related honorariums.

Last month, a three-person panel concluded the defendant repeatedly acted without integrity when he was at the helm of Winnipeg’s Robson Hall from 2016 to 2020.

Black-Branch, a lawyer with expertise in nuclear treaties, was found to have filed hundreds of questionable expense claims to the University of Manitoba totalling upwards of $600,000.

He spent faculty and endowment funds to advance his personal resumé and orchestrated a scheme to avoid oversight during a deanship that was cut short when an internal audit flagged his excessive spending and direction to subordinates to commit wrongdoing.

The university privately took its findings to the law society – where Black-Branch remains a member, although he is believed to be living in the U.K. – to investigate the matter further.

The professional watchdog authorized a charge against the ousted dean, who was automatically enlisted as a bencher on the society’s governing board because of his prestigious academic role, in 2021.

Black-Branch continuously tried to delay the public proceedings and was initially successful in doing so. The lawyer, who ended up representing himself after an eleventh-hour decision to fire his counsel, requested multiple adjournments in the name of vague mental health concerns.

He did not participate or submit a defence once the panel decided it could no longer continue postponing the case over his limited medical documentation.

A disciplinary committee made up of lawyers Grant Mitchell and Wendy Stewart and public representative Susan Boulter, ultimately categorized his behaviour as “fraud” in a guilty ruling issued on Dec. 15.

“Lawyers are supposed to be trusted to the ends of the earth. Who is ever going to be able to trust Dr. Black-Branch?”– Rocky Kravetsky, counsel for the Law Society of Manitoba

Citing the trio’s decision, Kravetsky provided a lengthy closing submission in favour of disbarment to protect members of the public and lawyer colleagues, in addition to serving as a warning to other professionals.

“Lawyers are supposed to be trusted to the ends of the earth,” he told a hearing room at the society’s headquarters on St. Mary Avenue. “Who is ever going to be able to trust Dr. Black-Branch?”

Kravetsky noted the 2016 Court of Appeal decision that upheld the disbarment of Robert Frank Doolan for a scheme that allowed him to steal from clients by overpaying fees on their behalf and pocketing reimbursements.

There is significantly more money in the Black-Branch case, and U of M – including its Marcel A. Desautels Centre for Private Enterprise and the Law endowment fund – is the sole “direct victim,” but the ex-dean’s behaviour in and of itself requires severe punishment, he said.

“I would argue there’s a million victims since the university is funded, to a large extent, by the taxpayers of Manitoba,” said Mitchell, chairman of the panel, during a brief interjection.

A university spokeswoman said the trust that students, alumni and donors place in U of M is taken “very seriously” and administration works hard to ensure all philanthropic gifts are put to good use while respecting a donor’s intentions.

Michele Desautels, a daughter of the late donor and namesake of an endowment fund that Black-Branch misused, said she hopes administrators “pull up their socks.”

“When these findings came to light, we immediately notified the donor, Marcel Desautels (1934-2023), to confirm that all misspent funds were restored through self-insurance,” said Stephanie Levene, associate vice-president of alumni and donor relations, in a statement Tuesday.

Levene said U of M has since undertaken a policy review and updates procedures “to prevent, to the best of our abilities, this type of abuse from ever recurring.”

The university, as well as a group of Robson Hall academics, has filed complaints with city police to undertake a criminal investigation into Black-Branch.

The Winnipeg Police Service confirmed Tuesday its financial crimes unit is reviewing the matter.

Black-Branch did not respond to a request for comment on the latest developments in his professional disciplinary case.

During the latest hearing, Mitchell made a point of noting the defendant’s silence in the wake of the panel’s ruling as well as his unusual decision not to participate in the proceedings in any capacity.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca