B.C. woman may lose home over huge lawyer bill, Woman owes $180,000 despite winning lawsuit and being awarded costs

B.C. woman may lose home over huge lawyer bill, Woman owes $180,000 despite winning lawsuit and being awarded costs by Kathy Tomlinson, December 3, 2012, CBC News
A B.C. woman stands to lose her home to her lawyer, who is moving to foreclose on her to pay his six-figure bill. “My friends and family say this can’t be happening. There’s got to be a mistake,” Dale Fotsch said. Fotsch got into the predicament after being sued by her former common-law husband, even though she won the case and the court ordered him to pay her costs. “I won, but I lost,” Fotsch said. “I defended myself and now I’m losing my place.” Fotsch, 54, lives near Pemberton with her disabled son and earns a modest income. Her only asset is her home and the 12 hectares of land it sits on. “I’ve worked two jobs, and I have for the last 25 years,” Fotsch said. “When I was hit with this, it was just like a bomb went off in my life.” A decade ago, her common law ex-husband Leigh Wilson went after Fotsch, trying to get a piece of her property after their breakup. The case took nine years to resolve, which was years longer than her lawyer had predicted, she said. “There was a three-week trial – three weeks! For my little place in the country. I mean, it just seems a little overboard and ridiculous,” Fotsch said. “There were three tables of binders, with papers stacked sky high.” She said she had already paid thousands in legal fees when the case finally went to trial in 2007. As it advanced, her lawyer said he wouldn’t continue unless she allowed him to secure a $100,000 mortgage against her property, at 18 per cent interest per year. Fotsch’s bill just keeps climbing because of $88 per day in interest charges. (CBC) Vancouver divorce lawyer Jonas Dubas charges $300 an hour. His invoices to Fotsch include charges like $148.40 to simply call another lawyer and leave a voicemail message. “Lots of people get a divorce. For some of them, it costs a little bit, but nothing like this. I mean, this is huge,” Fotsch said. When she finally won, in 2010, the B.C. Court of Appeal ordered Fotsch’s former husband to pay her court costs. That would have covered at least part of her bill from Dubas — which, by then, had reached $90,000. “When they said he was responsible for the costs, I thought that meant that he was going to pay them,” Fotsch said.  However, her ex-husband has since declared bankruptcy, so he hasn’t paid and she can’t force him to. Meanwhile, her legal bill has mushroomed — with $88 a day in interest charges — and has now reached $180,000. “I have a hard time sleeping at night. I’m one that keeps my bills paid. I’ve always paid my bills,” Fotsch said. … Dubas has hired his own lawyer who is taking steps to foreclose on Fotsch’s home. … “I’ve done nothing wrong. What have I done wrong?” Fotsch said, choking up in tears. “I’ve gone to court like they told me I had to, to save my place. And now the very person that I got to help me is taking it.” Fotsch said she realizes she is responsible for paying, but she said a legal system that would allow her to win her case then lose her home is perverse.

Halifax resident Lisa Finney said she, too, will never go to court again, after also winning her case but having nothing to show for it. Finney sued her employer, LifeMates, for wrongful dismissal in 2006. After her father died, she alleged in her statement of claim, her boss Craig Gleason gave her no time off to grieve and then fired her. When Gleason didn’t show up in court, the judge ruled in Finney’s favour and awarded her $10,000. Finney hired a paralegal to help her collect, but said it was futile. “No matter what I did, they could find a way to avoid payment. There was always a way to avoid it. And I could put good money after bad,” Finney said. Gleason’s bank refused to give her any information so she could seize money from his accounts. LifeMates is owned by a U.S. company, so it had no other assets in Canada for her to take. “It’s kind of a joke, really. We spend a lot of money in the court system. Going to court and putting these cases together. Employing a lot of people doing so,” Finney said. “And at the end of the day, if nothing comes of it, there’s really no point. It’s just a joke.” … “Lawyers are quite simply priced out of most people’s reach,” said John Paul Boyd, a Vancouver lawyer with Access Pro-Bono, who gives free legal assistance to people in need. It’s a problem Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has been raising for years, and it’s led her to lament that “access to justice is becoming a privilege of the rich.” [Emphasis added]

[Refer also to: Hell Froze Over As Argentina Embargoes Chevron’s $2 Billion In Assets  Chevron, which now has about $2 billion in assets in Argentina, has sworn it will never pay a dime to cleanup the contamination it left behind in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Said former General Counsel Charles James: “Not till hell freezes over, and then we will fight it out on the ice.” ]

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