Mercedes Perez was awarded one of the Mental Health Legal Committee’s 20th anniversary advocacy awards. The award recognizes excellence in advocacy in mental health law. The other recipients of this award were Jennifer Chambers and Lucy Costa (Empowerment Council) and lawyer Christel Francis. The Mental Health Legal Committee (MHLC) was formed in 1997 by a […]
Tag: Health Law
Mercedes Perez was interviewed by the Lawyered podcast on three recent and important developments in mental health law: a constitutional challenge to Ontario’s community treatment order regime; the Charter jurisdiction of the Ontario Review Board; and long-term psychiatric detention under Ontario’s Mental Health Act following the Court of Appeal’s decision in P.S. v. Ontario. Lawyered […]
Kelley Bryan, along with Karen Spector representing the intervener ARCH, appeared in the Court of Appeal on March 24, 2017 to argue that individuals in the civil mental health system should be able to assert Charter rights before the Consent and Capacity Board. Currently, if a person’s Charter rights are violated while in psychiatric […]
Alex will be speaking at Osgoode Professional Development’s 2017 Legal Guide to Consent, Capacity & Substitute Decision Making program to provide an overview of the the Substitute Decisions Act, 1992 alongside Kaylie Handler of Goddard Gamage Stephens LLP. The program attendees included lawyers, health practitioners and care facility administrators. […]
The Law Commission Of Ontario released its largest law reform report yet yesterday, as a part of its Capacity, Decision-Making and Guardianships project. PBP Lawyers participated, as members of the Mental Health Legal Committee, in several consultations over the four years that this project has been ongoing. Alex Procope co-authored both of the Mental Health Legal […]
Vincent Li’s killing of Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus in July 2008 is one of the most widely-publicized crimes in recent Canadian history. Mr. Li, then a 40-year-old in an undiagnosed psychotic state, stabbed and beheaded Tim McLean, a stranger beside him on the bus. Mr. Li was found not criminally responsible on account […]
On November 25, 2016 Alex was invited to teach professional responsibility and mental health at the Windsor Law Mental Health and the Law course. Topics included capacity to instruct counsel, confidentiality, duty of loyalty, disability accommodation and the difference between best interests and client interests. […]
As a part of the Law Commission of Ontario’s Project on Improving the Last Stages of Life, Alex, along with lawyers Ryan Fritsch and D’Arcy Hiltz, co-facilitated a roundtable on legal ethics and practice for the end of life. The roundtable brought together legal professionals from various backgrounds to discuss the practice issues they face […]
Alex spoke on panels at Osgoode Professional Development’s 2016 Legal Guide to Consent, Capacity & Substitute Decision Making to provide an overview of the the Substitute Decisions Act, 1992. The program attendees included lawyers, health practitioners and care facility administrators. […]
Mercedes successfully represented the appellant in an appeal from a decision of the Ontario Review Board. The Board had downgraded the appellant’s conditional discharge to a detention order. On appeal, the Court of Appeal for Ontario agreed that the Board’s decision was unreasonable and restored the appellant’s conditional discharge. Read the Court of Appeal’s decision […]