Nygard tells judge he needs another month to find new criminal lawyer

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This article was published 13/02/2024 (592 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Convicted rapist Peter Nygard still hasn’t found a lawyer to represent him in his Winnipeg criminal proceedings after his previous lawyer withdrew as his counsel last month owing to “ethical reasons.”

On Tuesday Nygard, appearing by phone from a hospital bed in a Toronto detention centre, told provincial court Associate Chief Judge Tracey Lord he is in the process of finding a new lawyer to represent him while he awaits trial on sexual assault and forcible confinement charges.

Nygard told Lord his civil lawyer, Wayne Onchulenko, is currently canvassing criminal lawyers in Winnipeg and said it would take “at least four weeks” to secure new counsel.

Last month, famed defence lawyer Brian Greenspan distanced himself from the disgraced fashion mogul as he awaits trial in Winnipeg, saying it’s the first time in his 50-year career that he has requested to withdraw from a case.

“There’s been an irreconcilable breakdown in the solicitor-client relationship, and I’ll go further and simply say that it is now what I would call and characterize as adversarial,” he told provincial court Judge Stacey Cawley on Jan. 12.

Nygard, 82, was charged in July 2023 with sexual assault and forcible confinement stemming from an alleged incident at his former company headquarters in Winnipeg in November 1993. The charge has not been tested in court.

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Greenspan also represented Nygard in a six-week trial last year in Toronto when he faced five counts of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement in incidents alleged to have occurred between the 1980s and mid-2000s. He was found guilty on four counts of sexual assault.

Greenspan also requested to withdraw from the Toronto case, citing similar reasons.

In January criminal defence lawyer Megan Savard told a Toronto court Nygard is in the process of retaining her services.

— with files from the Canadian Press

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.