Suspended lawyer accused of smuggling cannabis into jail had no address before arrest: process server

A lawyer suspended by the profession’s provincial regulator before he was accused of being part of a scheme to smuggle cannabis into Headingley jail appeared to have no fixed address before he was arrested by the the RCMP.

That’s according to a sworn affidavit from a process server, who was looking to give Chad Russell Sutherland legal notice of a lawsuit filed against him by a former client.

One of the lawyers at the firm he used to work at told the process server on March 2 she did not know where he was, the affidavit said.

“She advised that she did not know if he even had a place to live at this time,” said the process server in her affidavit, filed March 27.

Sutherland, 43, was suspended indefinitely in February by the Law Society of Manitoba for improperly asking a client for cash, failing to show up to court on several occasions and not responding to the regulator while it investigated him.

Former client Andrew Manning, who’s currently an inmate in Milner Ridge jail, filed a lawsuit in early March against Sutherland and the law firm Gindin Wiebe Segal Law.

Manning, who is representing himself, is seeking a total of $250,000 in damages.

He alleges Sutherland performed “no meaningful legal work” and failed to return money owed to him. The inmate, who’s currently before the court on several charges, including sexual assault and distributing intimate images, later dismissed Sutherland as his lawyer.

Gindin Wiebe Segal Law, where Sutherland worked between August 2021 and July 2024, has denied all of Manning’s allegations about the firm in a statement of defence filed in March, and is seeking to have the court dismiss the claim against the practice.

Sutherland has yet to respond to the lawsuit in court.

On March 27 — weeks after the lawsuit was filed — RCMP charged Sutherland with conspiracy to distribute cannabis, conspiracy to commit mischief and conspiracy to possess a prohibited or restricted firearm.

He’s also facing charges of assault and mischief from last summer, several court-order breaches since and charges of assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily from incidents earlier in March.

Sutherland appeared on the RCMP’s radar after corrections officers at Headingley jail on March 30 last year noticed the smell of cannabis and sought to find out who had taken the drug into the jail.

Sutherland was soon identified as the suspect, but he was not charged until the law society’s professional regulatory proceedings were completed this year.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca