A lawyer in the Quad Counties will wait to serve a one-year suspension.
The Boudrot-Rodgers law firm shut down in 2018; Jason Boudrot, one of the two name partners, was charged with misappropriating money from clients’ trust funds.
Members of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society said Adam Rodgers, the other partner, should have caught what Boudrot was doing sooner and stopped it.
A hearing on two professional misconduct charges and one charge of professional misconduct and/or professional incompetence took place in October.
In a January decision, members of a three-person panel found Rodgers guilty of one professional misconduct charge; they found the other two charges were not supported.
They said “it is clear that Mr. Rodgers did not actively and knowingly directly assist Mr. Boudrot in the massive misappropriation of trust funds” but “it is more probable than not that Adam Rodgers allowed Jason Boudrot to misappropriate clients’ trust funds through his willful blindness and recklessness, and thereby failed in his professional obligations.”
Panel members, who said there was no evidence to suggest professional incompetence, met to determine a penalty, and released that decision in March; they suspended Rodgers for one year, effective July 1.
Other sanctions included completion of a professional responsibility course at Dalhousie’s law school and payment of the $12,000 cost of his investigation.
Rodgers is Desmond family counsel at the Desmond Fatality Inquiry.
He says members have agreed to wait three months until the inquiry is finished before he starts to serve his suspension, and he can receive another extension if delays push the inquiry beyond that three-month period.
