Where is Fantino these days? I couldn't help but notice his absence when Vincent and Cirillo died...............
Grieving parents of dead soldier stuck with legal fees in fight with DND
A grieving couple, threatened with jail by the Canadian Forces if they didn’t participate in an inquiry into their daughter’s suicide, have been stuck with the legal bill after they went to court to force the military to back off its threats.
The federal government is not only refusing to pay Rick and Ellen Rogers’s own $2,425.55 legal tab but believes the couple is also liable for the Department of National Defence’s court costs.
The battle by the Rogers family to get answers about their daughter’s 2012 death, along with details of how the Canadian Forces continued to make demands on the couple, was revealed by the Citizen on Oct. 21. The news story prompted James Bezan, parliamentary secretary to the minister of defence, to tell the House of Commons that the military’s treatment of the Rogers family was “not acceptable.”
Even so, the government refuses to pay the $2,425 it cost the Rogers family to legally force the Canadian military to back off on its demands that the couple produce medical and phone records of their deceased daughter, Lt. Shawna Rogers.
“The army has been pretty vindictive from the start, once we began asking questions about Shawna’s death that they didn’t want to answer,” he explained. “They came after us trying to force us to go to their board of inquiry. We weren’t looking to get into a legal battle, but the army didn’t give us any choice.”
The Rogers have also been told that the Canadian Forces and DND think the family is liable to pay the government’s court costs.
However, in a letter sent in July 2013, Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Richards stated that her client — the Canadian Forces — had decided not to request that payment from the Rogers family. Richards did not outline what the Canadian Forces thought the family owed them.
The Justice Department argues that the Canadian Forces is under no obligation to pay the couple’s legal fees and that they should have checked with the military before proceeding to court.
But Rogers said he went out of his way to tell the army he wanted nothing to do with its board of inquiry. He told BOI officials to stop phoning the family at their home. A legal letter was sent to the Office of the Judge Advocate General Blaise Cathcart, informing the military that the Rogerses did not want to attend the BOI. Still, the military insisted on sending the summonses to him and his wife, Rick Rogers said.
The summons was dropped only after Rogers’s lawyer challenged it in an Ottawa court.
The Justice Department referred questions to DND about whether the department would pay the family’s legal fees, but no answer was received on that issue.
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Grieving parents of dead soldier stuck with legal fees in fight with DND
