KITCHENER — A Superior Court judge in Kitchener has ordered a Waterloo lawyer to pay $100,000 for "inexcusable and reprehensible" conduct during a child custody case.

Brigitte Gratl, who represented a mother whose daughter was made a Crown ward, must pay $50,000 both to the Ontario Legal Aid Plan and Julie Kirkpatrick, a lawyer who later represented the mother during the appeal process.

"I find that Ms. Gratl's stubborn refusal to act in her client's interest … clearly establishes the basis for a finding of inadequate and ineffective counsel that has brought the administration of justice into disrepute," Justice Grant Campbell wrote in his ruling.

Gratl represented the mother at the start of an appeal of a December 2015 ruling making the child a Crown ward. The appeal was paid for by legal aid.

"Ms. Gratl's tactic and strategy has caused an unnecessary duplication of effort of counsel, unnecessary extra court attendances and a significant consumption of court and counsel's resources and taxpayer funding," Campbell said.

The court ruling in 2015 cancelled the mother's access to her daughter and Gratl "declined, refused or otherwise ignored" the mother's plea to bring a motion reinstating access, Campbell said.

"As a direct result of Ms. Gratl's ineffective and inadequate representation of (the mother's) interests on the appeal, the parent-child relationship was allowed to remain severed for over 14 months," the judge said.

"Had Ms. Gratl been attentive to her then-client's interests, there is no doubt in my mind that a motion for access pending appeal would have succeeded and the parent-child relationship would have been continued. It is solely and directly as a result of Ms. Gratl that that relationship may never be successfully re-established."

Campbell ruled Gratl's "inattentiveness" to the mother's dilemma is "both inexcusable and reprehensible."

"Without question, I find that that pattern of inaction establishes Ms. Gratl's inadequate and ineffective representation of (the mother) during the appeal process."

A lawyer who runs up costs without good reason or wastes costs can be ordered by a judge to repay the money.

"Ms. Gratl's failure to order and obtain trial transcripts created delay, duplication of effort, unnecessary multiple attendances at assignment courts, two motions to delay the appeal hearing and several attendances to manage the appeal process which arose directly as a result of Ms. Gratl's ineffectiveness and inattentiveness," the judge said.

"Her behaviour demands court castigation and redress."

The case earlier prompted Campbell to apologize to the parents of the girl. He said Ontario's child welfare system was "broken."

The parents and child "have been consumed and trampled by the Frankenstein process we have created and allowed to become unmanageable, "Campbell said.

The girl, now 10 years old, had been in "legal limbo" after she was apprehended by the Children's Aid Society in 2012 when her mother failed a drug test later shown to be flawed.

The parents appeared "stunned and confused" by how the system treated them and their child, the judge said.

"You don't seem to be able to understand how this could and did happen," Campbell said.

"Your confusion is entirely understandable and although it will offer you little comfort, I apologize to you for the manner in which you have been treated, ignored, demeaned and disbelieved."

The judge added: "It should not have happened. You should have been treated better. It did, and you weren't, and for that, on behalf of the very system that perpetrated this upon you, I apologize to you both."

The child was taken from her mother in 2012 when Motherisk testing erroneously found the mother had been using cocaine.

"Mother repeated to anyone who would listen — and few did, including her own counsel — that the drug tests were wrong and that she was not using cocaine," Campbell said.

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A 14-day trial started in 2014 and proceeded intermittently over eight months. In December 2015, almost three and a half years after the child was wrongly apprehended, a judge ruled the child should be made a Crown ward.

"This passage of time is not only entirely unacceptable, it is reprehensible and cannot be justified or excused on any credible basis," Campbell said.

The parents finally gave up their fight for custody, believing it would be better for the child to remain with her foster mother.