Canada’s highest court will hear an appeal by the family of murdered billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman who are trying to keep court documents detailing their estate private.

The Star and its reporter earlier this year won a ruling at the Ontario Court of Appeal to make the Sherman estate files public. The trustees for the Sherman estate sought leave to appeal that ruling and on Thursday the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal.

In Canada, court documents and proceedings are typically public, including estate files that deal with the probate of an estate after death.

Barry Sherman, founder of generic drug giant Apotex, and his wife, Honey, a well-known philanthropist, were found dead in their home on Dec. 15, 2017. They had been strangled, their bodies held in a seated position by belts looped around a railing on the edge of their basement pool.

The Star’s reporter first asked for the Sherman estate documents in 2018 and a clerk at the counter of the downtown Superior Court said there was a “protective order” on the file, made by Justice Sean Dunphy.

At a court hearing, Dunphy maintained the seal, after hearing arguments from lawyers acting for the Sherman estate trustees. The trustees’ lawyers said that to reveal the information (which includes a will and disposition of assets) to the public would endanger the lives of the Sherman family and the trustees.

The Star argued the identity of the trustees and the Shermans’ adult children were well known, along with the fact that Barry Sherman was a billionaire. Dunphy agreed with the Sherman estate and maintained the seal.

The Star and its reporter appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeal, which made a unanimous ruling overturning Dunphy’s decision, which would have made the estate files public had the Sherman’s not almost immediately asked the Supreme Court for a hearing.

In the decision by justices David Doherty, Paul Rouleau and C. William Hourigan, the Court of Appeal upheld the open court principle in Canada and found that while “the Shermans want to keep family and estate-related matters private” and “they want to grieve in private,” that is not sufficient to seal what is normally a public file.

The court of appeal also took issue with Dunphy’s contention that because the Sherman couple was murdered, the trustees of the estate or the family members of the estate would be in danger if any information was revealed. The Sherman family had provided the court with an affidavit that the Court of Appeal noted was not based on any information provided by police investigating the crime and so was “speculation,” not grounded in evidence as the law requires. The affidavit and the identity of its author are sealed. The affidavit warns of “kidnapping and violence” should any information be released.

A Toronto homicide detective investigating the Sherman case, Det. Const. Dennis Yim, recently told a Toronto court that, to his knowledge, nobody in the Sherman family is in danger. The case is being investigated as a double homicide and police are currently reviewing a “voluminous” amount of information and a report by Toronto Police intelligence analysts, before applying for more judicial production orders.

Yim also revealed, during a court challenge by the Star to have some police files on the case unsealed, that the estate files of Barry and Honey Sherman are “embedded” in their investigative files.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Now the estate case is headed to the Supreme Court for a hearing. The estate files will remain sealed pending the hearing, which will be on an “expedited” basis, according to the Supreme Court. A date has not yet been set for the hearing in Ottawa before the full court.

As is normally the case, the Supreme Court did not reveal their reasons behind agreeing to hear the case. The Supreme Court only hears a fraction of appeal applications, typically hearing 60 of the 800 leave to appeal applications made to the court each year.

Read more about: