A Burnaby lawyer has been banned from practising law for two months and ordered to pay more than $14,000 in costs for misusing the court process to harass and intimidate his estranged wife during their divorce and child-custody proceedings.
Brock Anthony Edwards is a local lawyer who practises personal injury and criminal law at Edwards & Co. at the corner of Kingsway and Nelson Avenue in Metrotown.
In May, a disciplinary panel at the Law Society of B.C. found Edwards had engaged in professional misconduct by using the court process to harass and intimidate his ex-wife; threatening and launching legal proceedings for an improper purpose; filing legal documents improperly; threatening to purposely drive up his ex-wife’s legal costs; and not properly paying his ex-wife $500 in costs ordered by the court.
“(Edwards) utilized his legal expertise to bring improper pressure to bear on his opponents in legal proceedings,” stated the panel ruling. “He would have been unable to pursue such a course had he not been a lawyer with significant court experience.”
Last week, a law society panel ruled Edwards should be suspended from the practice of law, starting Jan. 1 and pay $14,058.71 in costs before June 1.
The sanctions relate to Edwards’ conduct during divorce and child-custody proceedings, which started after his 2012 separation.
By the time a divorce was granted in the case in March 2014, Justice Carol Ross found Edwards owed $58,313 in unpaid child support.
In her decision, Ross also called Edwards’ conduct throughout the case “unacceptable.”
She said Edwards had failed to produce documents, ignored a court order to pay child support and drove up his wife’s legal costs by not cooperating on the division of property.
Edwards’ explanation for not paying child support was that he believed there should be shared custody and that he had other expenses with which to cope, according to Ross’s ruling.
“Of course, none of these excuses amount to acceptable reasons to disregard the order of the court,” Ross said. “I find it remarkable to think that Mr. Edwards, a practising lawyer, would have believed that they were.”
About two years later, Edwards applied to have the parenting arrangements outlined in Ross’s ruling changed and the amount of his unpaid child support reduced.
His conduct during those proceedings was blasted by another judge, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Terence Schultes.
At the end of one hearing, Schultes said to Edwards:
“I know how emotions run high in family matters, but you don’t want to lose your professional reputation, and people have been disbarred for less.”
In a later ruling, Schultes concluded Edwards had been “using the court process as a means of harassing and intimidating” his ex-wife – including launching a lawsuit against her new domestic partner for an alleged assault on Edwards’ son three years earlier.
Edwards had threatened the suit while initiating a process for him and his ex-wife to deal with the issue of his unpaid child support.
“This indicates to me that (Edwards) sees the institution of dubious but highly prejudicial legal proceedings against third parties as a legitimate tactic to further his position in the family law proceedings,” Schultes said in a June 23, 2017 decision.
The law society’s disciplinary actions against Edwards were launched in January 2019.
In its final ruling on Nov. 26, the panel said a suspension and costs were warranted in the case.
“The Respondent’s unprofessional behaviour was protracted and continued in the face of numerous criticisms and warnings from the court,” stated the ruling. “His judgment was patently contorted by his emotional response to his matrimonial situation, and he was indifferent to the impact on his family, his colleagues, the court system and other parties who were simply doing their job.”
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
Email [email protected]
