Errol Massiah, the former Durham Region justice of the peace who was fired for sexually harassing women at the Whitby courthouse, would like the public to pick up the legal tab from his discipline proceedings.

His bill is $770, 360. And 16 cents.

The figure can be found in submissions filed with the Justices of the Peace Review Council, the independent body that recommended to the attorney general in 2015 that Massiah be sacked. A discipline panel must now decide whether they should also recommend that part or all of Massiah’s legal bill be covered by tax dollars, a power granted to them under Ontario law.

He was found to have made a number of inappropriate comments to women at the courthouse, including leaning in close to the ear of a female prosecutor and saying “Oooh lady in red.” On another occasion, as she was walking by, he said “Looking goooood.” Massiah said the comments were part of his “management style.”

A female staffer also reported him changing in his chambers with the door open.

The discipline panel concluded in 2015 that the harassment led to a “poisoned work environment” and “is so manifestly and profoundly destructive of the judicial role and integrity in the judiciary that public confidence requires (Massiah) to be removed from office.”

The panel recommended at the time that he not be paid a cent, but the Divisional Court has ordered that they reconsider.

That’s exactly what the two-member panel has been trying to do this year, but has had to spend time reviewing and responding to motions filed by Massiah’s lawyer, Ernest Guiste, that they have deemed unnecessary.

Massiah is trying to relitigate the entire case, the panel says, something the Divisional Court said should not happen. The court said the only issue to be reconsidered is whether the ex-JP should be compensated for the discipline proceedings. The court upheld the decision that he should be fired.

It’s gotten to the point where the review council panel has made an order that Massiah’s lawyer not file any more motions without first asking their permission.

Presenting counsel — the term the review council uses for the external lawyers it hired to “present” the case against Massiah — are Marie Henein and Matthew Gourlay.

“Astronomical” is the word they’ve used for the legal bill Massiah has tendered. In submissions filed with the council last week, they argue that if Massiah must be paid, it should only be for the discipline hearing itself, which lasted about seven days, and even then he should be paid at a “discounted” rate. (Henein declined to comment to the Star.)

No money should be paid to cover costs for the many motions filed by Guiste before and after the hearing, which Henein and Gourlay say bogged down the process and served no purpose. Guiste’s bill alone is about $536,000 in fees and expenses, out of the total $770,000.

“The astronomical quantum of fees claimed by Mr. Massiah has no basis in precedent or common sense and the public would rightly be outraged if asked to foot the bill,” they write in their submissions.

“This was, at its core, a relatively straightforward hearing that Mr. Massiah’s counsel, Mr. Guiste, chose to conduct in an extraordinarily un-straightforward and vexatious manner.”

Guiste has countered by telling the Star that presenting counsel’s submissions are “aggressive and highly political rhetoric.” He argues in his submissions that judicial independence requires a strong defence during discipline proceedings.

In its first decision to not recommend compensation, the discipline panel started with the premise that there should be no coverage of fees when serious misconduct has been found or the JP has been recommended for removal.

The Divisional Court said the panel should have instead started from the premise that it is always in the best interests “of the administration of justice to ensure that (justices of the peace) have the benefit of counsel.”

But the court also found that this does not mean a JP who has been the subject of a successful complaint should always expect to be compensated.

Most of the discipline hearing itself was conducted by a different lawyer for Massiah, Jeffry House, who recently requested that he be removed from the record as one of Massiah’s lawyers. House, who declined to comment to the Star, is asking for about $94,000.

Another chunk of the bill is related to Massiah’s partially successful appeal in Divisional Court, which was handled by a different set of lawyers.

The total sum for that proceeding and a failed attempt to seek leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal is about $135,000, according to documents filed with the review council, which presenting counsel have argued shouldn’t be covered.

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Last week, after the Star contacted Guiste for comment on presenting counsel’s submissions, he filed with the review council even more material. He included in the documents the Star reporter’s email requesting comment.

The email “raises reasonable concerns that confidential documents are being supplied to the media in what appears to be an effort to galvanize public opinion and scorn against (His Worship) and his counsel,” Guiste writes in his latest motion.

In fact, the submissions and motions filed with the council are public documents, including the motion quoted above.

“The bottom line is that Mr. Massiah, who was once a sworn judicial officer, continues to conduct these proceedings in the style of a vexatious litigant, wasting time and resources with baseless allegations of misconduct against virtually everyone involved in this process,” Henein and Gourlay write in their submissions.

“The public would be justifiably outraged to learn that litigation conduct of this kind were to be reward with compensation from the public purse.”

Guiste disagrees with the way his conduct as Massiah’s lawyer has been portrayed by presenting counsel.

“The role and function of presenting counsel in these proceedings is governed by the (review council) procedures document and it is clear that the aggressive and highly political rhetoric displayed here is inconsistent with the role and decorum of that office,” he told the Star in an email.

He rightly noted that there is no requirement that the attorney general accept a recommendation from the review council to cover a justice of the peace’s legal fees.

Historically, the recommendations have been approved, including one to cover Massiah’s $123,000 legal bill from a previous discipline proceeding, which found he sexually harassed a number of women at the Oshawa courthouse. In that case, he was suspended in 2012 for 10 days without pay and ordered to take gender sensitivity training.

Massiah, who was appointed to the bench by former attorney general Michael Bryant in 2007, presided over cases until 2010, when discipline proceedings were commenced and he was suspended with pay. He continued to collect his $122,000 annual salary until he was fired in 2015.

The two-member discipline panel — comprising justice of the peace Michael Cuthbertson and community member Leonore Foster — has not indicated when they will reach a recommendation on compensation. Attorney General Yasir Naqvi’s office said he’ll carefully review any recommendation from the panel before making a decision.

“I think a reasonable and objective person may come to a conclusion that there’s far too great a sense of entitlement at play here,” Progressive Conservative justice critic Randy Hillier told the Star.

“For you or I or anybody else to collect a handsome wage and provide no benefit to the public, provide no service, I think most people would say ‘count your lucky stars.’ Do you not think that the public has already paid dearly enough?”

Since 2009, at least six Ontario justices of the peace have had part or all of their legal fees paid by taxpayers, totalling more than $230,000.

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