Lawyer investigated

Regina lawyer Tony Merchant has been investigated by the provincial law society over two letters he wrote soliciting residential school litigants.

The Merchant Law Firm is handling as many as two-thirds of the 6,000 suits launched by former residential school students against the federal government and the churches that were involved in running residential schools.

The Law Society of Saskatchewan is expected to report on its investigation by the end of November.

The letters were sent to two former residential school students in Saskatchewan in the fall of 1998. The three counts against Mr. Merchant allege: that one of the letters was likely to create “an unjustified expectation about the results;” that the two letters were “reasonably capable of misleading the intended recipient;” and that the lawyer undertook marketing activity which was “undignified, in bad taste or otherwise offensive.”

Mr. Merchant did not attend the proceedings but his lawyer, Gord Kuski, denied that the letters were misleading or that they overstepped permissible marketing rules.