Yes Ben , I’m interested to have a look at the numbers on the cost of legal fees . Is this the way the contracts have always been dealt with ? I thought both sides would sit down together over a couple of pop and work it out . Seems everything is so convoluted now that you can’t make a move without a lawyers guiding hand [ in someone’s pockets ].

Hmmm – answer will be no info. Client privileged information between the city and the lawyer?

The taxpayer is the client so has a right to know the cost.

The city is the client. This gives the City the right to disclose whatever it wants to.
Solicitor-client privilege lies with the client, not the solicitor.

I would like to see all legal costs set up separate when the city publishes them, but it is not worth dreaming.

How much for each court case would be nice. :)

There are four basic elements necessary to establish the existence of attorney-client privilege:

1. a communication;

2. made between privileged persons;

3. in confidence;

4. for the purpose of seeking, obtaining or providing legal assistance to the client.

The question in my mind, that is not answered anywhere that I have looked is whether the “seeking” part includes the fee as well as the extent and methodology of the assistance provided. To put that in simple terms, would a request for proposal that may have gone out, or the written proposal offering a specific service to the City be considered to be privileged?

There is even a more fundamental question which is whether the lawyer was providing primarily legal advice or business advice and negotiating tactical advice.

One way to determine which it was, or for which part it was, is to determine whether, under provincial legislation, a lawyer was required in order to act on behalf of a client.

In practice, the proposal that any service contractor provides to the potential client should be considered privilege which actually belongs to the proponent since they are business “secrets” which would allow a competitor to get clear detail of how other proponents set up their service strategy. The proposed total price and scope of service would not be privileged.

I think that is what is being asked here – the total invoice by the legal firm for the services rendered specific to the union contract negotiation account.

I cannot find anything that would add that to the attorney-client privilege. It is not legal advice and is provided at the conclusion of the service and is thus not included in the “purpose of seeking” condition.

guesswhat wrote: “The city is the client. This gives the City the right to disclose whatever it wants to.”

I agree with that other than the actual proposal made by the lawyer to the City offering the services which details the methodology which would reveal the law firm’s proprietary information to competitors.

The City most certainly should not hide behind the privilege argument as an excuse for not divulging the cost of the service. Any reasonable thinking person would see through that guise.

How about the total costs for both the Lawyer & Security Company?

The City has already refused to give this information to the Citizen Newspaper. The reason given by Walter Babicz, city legislative director and FOIPPA co-ordinator, who cited a ruling by the BC Supreme Court that came to the conclusion that even a “summary accounting document reflecting the total amount of payment to a law firm on a particular matter was also subject to solicitor-client privilege”

The City does have to disclose the total amount paid to the firm Harris & Co. in its annual Statement of Financial Information, released every spring, if the amount is more than $25000.00. That figure, however, would include all work done by any of Harris & Co’s attorneys for the City over the last year, not specifically for the bargaining/negotiation costs.

I agree that the City could release this information if it chose to, however it seems they don’t want us to know.

Are we being **Stonewalled**?

Just pay your taxes, grumble and watch where you are going driving our streets now. Just give those city hall folks a “Freedom of Information” X on your ballot later this year. Then THEY will know the cost of their perceived misdeeds during their stay at city hall. (If you remember). Lots of the only 40% of the people who vote get stricken with good dose of ol’ amnesia during political campaigns. The incumbents like that.

So WHO really is the “City”???
Without taxpayers do we have a “City”??
So, Why does the taxpayer not have a right to information such as lawyer fees? No, this is absolutly not a case of micro-management.
Oh yes, perhaps there is an obscure provision for ‘privacy’ in the Local Government Act – remember how the Mayor and crew interpreted ‘land sales’ last summer in the Pine Valley issue?
Replace the Mayor and her yes-men!

“summary accounting document reflecting the total amount of payment to a law firm on a particular matter was also subject to solicitor-client privilege”

That is fine. That is that court’s opinion.

What I posted above is a from a legal firm’s page. Here it is again:

There are four basic elements necessary to establish the existence of attorney-client privilege: (that means they all have to be present, not just some)

1. a communication;
2. made between privileged persons;
3. in confidence;
4. for the purpose of seeking, obtaining or providing legal assistance to the client.

1 certainly is the case
2 is the case as well
3 is as well
4 is the interesting one … it has to be “legal” assistance … not engineering assistance, not accounting assistance, not operational assistance, not business management assistance …. just because one is a lawyer, does not mean that they cannot provide business management assistance. BUT, that is then not LEGAL assistance, it is BUSINESS assistance or NEGOTIATION assistance.

There is nothing that requires a lawyer to read, understand and tweak labour contracts. Anyone with a logical mind who understands the contextual nuances of the English language can do that. As a matter of fact, some of those will at times read all the passages rather than skip over boiler plated phrases and paragraphs which some Layers may just skip over.

The City is the legal entity which operates under a charter of the province at their wish and through the votes cast by the residents of the City.

There are two different issues here. One is what communications between a lawyer and client are subject to privilege. The court ruling cited by the city bears on this issue. It says that the privilege applies not only to legal advice and the information provided by the client in seeking it but to the bills presented by the lawyer. The other issue is who holds the privilege. The long-accepted answer to that is the client. The privilege binds the lawyer not to reveal information without the client’s permission. The client is not bound by the privilege.

This applies to the present issue as follows: the lawyer may not disclose her bills without the permission of the City. The City is free to disclose the bills.

Quite simply, I think this is a matter of transparency. Even if it were privileged, to the best of my knowledge that does not bind the city from releasing it if they choose to.

If that is true, then it means someone in the city is making a deliberate decision to not release the information. Why they would do that is beyond me. I honestly think that city hall is just full of people with little man’s syndrome and they make decisions like these to satisfy their childish need for some sort of power rush.

My question is:
Why wouldn’t they tell us? What difference does it make to them if we know the cost, we can’t ask for a refund.