Good point, and this comment that has appeared in multiple stories also seemed to me like an odd/questionable choice for an attorney. I also think people are choosing to interpret it as though Danson was making a comment on EL’s mental health. But an alternative interpretation is that he was continuing to allege EL is very physically ill… and maybe there are reasons Danson would continue to push that narrative in some way shape or form. I don’t know. But it seems odd.
I agree with you on this as well. I don’t understand why the attorney would not just say, “I have withdrawn as counsel and I have no further comment.”
I’m not an attorney in Canada, but if a lawyer in the States comes to suspect or believe that their client has lied to the court, the first approach is to encourage them via all avenues available to you for them to correct the record themselves. If the client does not do so, the lawyer has an ethical obligation to withdraw as counsel because they must disclose the perjured or false statement to the court.
If that statement then gets quoted in an article, well, there’s not a lot I can do about that.
If there’s an ethical violation, it’s the comment about paying the judgements.
It depends on the jurisdiction. In mine, the disclosure is required alongside the withdrawal as I have to present the court with a reason, so if I say my client intends to commit perjury, I have to disclose what I know with that reason. I don’t know the rules in other countries.
I read the last comment to suggest that he (the lawyer) never gets paid so why would he expect former client to pay this judgment? Probably shouldn’t have said that, but I don’t think it means he knew anything beforehand.
Thank you @Virginia_Horse_Mom, for your kind comment and also for sharing further information.
Thank you too for sharing your experiences with cancer, as well.
Re EL’s lawyer, I don’t have much knowledge of the law and what he should or shouldn’t have done,but my feeling (for what that is worth) is that in becoming friends with his client - over decades - he has perhaps done more to try to defend his client/friend than was wise or perhaps appropriate.
And in that case, I am sorry for him.
The sad part about that is EL is based out of the Netherlands and has been for years. It couldn’t have been that hard to find someone to do the translation. If he paid half as much attention to his fraud as he does to show jumping we would probably still be clueless about it.
Trouble with forging a medical document is that the person needs to know both the desired language and medical terminology.
Bonus if the forger does enouggh research to determine what languages the alleged auhor is fluent in.
Re the lawyer — I have no idea, but speaking generally …
It is one thing to put up with and repeatedly try to help your flaky friend. Who has serial bad judgment and bad life choices, but you believe is a good and kind person at heart.
It is something else to find out that your friend has been using you for years for their own ends. Mostly you keeping them out of trouble, allowing them to keep making money on crooked deals.
And maybe they have a million excuses why they never pay what they owe you. You just carry the bill because… well, maybe you think that they are just disorganized and incompetent at life, but a nice person.
That may or may not be what has been going on in the EL case(s).
I think we’ve all been there to some extent with a flaky friend, and wondering when to pull the plug
For a lawyer it’s complicated because you professionally owe the client loyalty and support until they do something so legally unethical like perjury and lying to you that you need to step away to avoid professional sanctions.
Lawyers exist to support and defend people who are flaky, people who are guilty, people who repeatedly get into financial or legal trouble. That is the job of the lawyer. The lawyer doesn’t just support innocent people from false accusations. The lawyer supports people who are obviously guilty but tries to mitigate things for them. Often enough, way past the point most friends would stop supporting that person (murderers, rapists) and all business associates would sever ties (fraud, white collar crime, crypto dudes). The lawyer indeed is required to continue supporting these clients once they take them on, unless the client does something so wrong in the court process or relationship with the lawyer that it’s risks damaging the lawyers professional status.
There’s nothing “wrong” with a lawyer advising a client how you legitimately work the court system to delay or complicate or counter law suits with financial penalties. If we look at any high profile cases that we can follow through the news, that’s how these things roll.
The lawyer can also explain scenarios. You can do this thing and delay things, you can do that thing and refuse to pay, but there will be consequences of these things. Up to client how they choose to act
Yeah, big “Oops!” on that one, because of all the possible languages he could speak, apparently the good Dr. Taib does not speak Dutch.
“The plaintiff’s attorney soon found that the doctor’s name was listed differently on his website and in his own biography stated that he speaks English, Arabic, and French, but not Dutch.”
Oh but wait. Maybe that was part of EL’s brilliant scheme! He composed the fraudulent letter in a language the doctor couldn’t read, so the doctor wouldn’t know what he did not write!
Maybe he used AI. “ChatGPT, write me a letter stating that I have been diagnosed with XXXX. Sign it Dr. Oulad Taib at Chirec Cancer Institute in Belgium.”
So the ChatGPT engine surmises that Dr. Taib speaks Dutch and writes the letter accordingly.
Absolutely (so many years spent working on contracts that relied on medical terminology), but to fail on the very basic component of language accuracy (as opposed to medical language accuracy) is a big fat criminal fail. Remember, it wasn’t a medical person fluent in Dutch that uncovered it, it was just someone fluent in the language!
Yep, that is a major pitfall of generative AI. It is great at delivering content, but it often cannot be relied on for accuracy or reliability/usability of that content.
To me, the lawyer/friend sounds like he genuinely did not know. As pointed out above several times, the things the lawyer is quoted as saying are a bit intemperate. They sound to me not like a lawyer who is firing a client, but like a friend who just realised in a public and humiliating way, that the person they thought was a friend has been deceiving them for a long time. Those statements sound tinged with the emotional reaction of finding your friend has betrayed you and done so in a way that hurts you professionally on top of the personal hurt. That, to me, is the strongest indication that the lawyer honestly thought he was sick with cancer and on the up and up about his medical condition.
Curious, for whose benefit you are explaining the role of an attorney? I think most of us know what an attorney’s job entails, the attorneys who are participating in this thread certainly do.
I have the same impression that @FitzE does, it seems to me that the attorney/friend wasn’t aware of the fraud. It’s the impression I get from his internet postings. When you (G) see people face to face, it’s easier to develop a more accurate guess, but he does, through his words, seem shocked.
The situation for all involved is really too bad, and I hope that somehow there will be a better end to the matter than seems likely at this point in time.
