Prominent Nunavut and Ontario lawyer disbarred after marrying 2 women
CBC
A prominent lawyer in Nunavut and Ontario has been disbarred by Ontario's Law Society Tribunal for forging divorce documents and illegally marrying a second woman while he was already married.
James Morton's hearing was held Wednesday, where a three-person panel revoked his licence to practise law and fined him $4,500 to pay to the Law Society of Ontario, according to an endorsement document from the Law Society Tribunal.
Morton pleaded guilty to charges of bigamy and forgery in a Ontario court on April 26, 2019, and was sentenced in September of that year.
He was originally suspended from practising law in Nunavut and Ontario in 2018.
According to the reason for sentencing, Morton had forged a divorce order in 2018 to marry his paralegal while still being married to his first wife.
Morton was married to his first wife — a Justice of the Peace he met at law school — for 30 years before that.
According to the reason for sentencing, a few years before the incident occurred, he started a relationship with his paralegal who had been working for him for 10 years.
In 2016, Morton had moved his law office from the Greater Toronto Area to Hamilton. During a trip to Montreal in March 2017, Morton and the paralegal became engaged. At the time, she was still married and told him she was getting a divorce. Morton told her he was also getting a divorce.
Morton and his new fiancée bought the house they had been running the law office out of in the summer of 2017, a few months after their engagement.
In September 2017, Morton's fiancée received her legal divorce papers. Morton never filed for divorce and created phony papers he then showed her.
They scheduled a wedding date and sent out invitations for May 12, 2018, at a golf club in Hamilton.
With the wedding day approaching, Morton's fiancée was asking him to obtain a marriage licence that he kept saying he would deal with. The woman sent their law student to the courthouse with Morton's fake divorce order to obtain a certificate of divorce, which was needed to get the marriage licence.
When the law student gave the court clerk the phony document, the clerk realized something was wrong and told the student the court couldn't issue the certificate until they found the file.
The student returned to the office and told the fiancée what had happened and that the clerk would mail the divorce certificate.
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