CITATION: Khan v. Law Society of Ontario, 2024 ONSC 3092
DIVISIONAL COURT FILE NO.: DC-23-00000660-0000
DATE: 20240620
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
DIVISIONAL COURT
D.L. Corbett, Matheson, and O’Brien JJ
BETWEEN:
MUHAMMAD ASLAM KHAN
M. Khan, Self-Represented
Appellant
- and -
law society of ontario
D. Iny, for the Respondent, Law Society of Ontario
Respondent
HEARD May 27, 2024
O’BRIEN J.
reasons for DECISION
[1] Mr. Khan appeals a decision of a Law Society Tribunal Appeal Panel dated October 26, 2023 and the related costs decision dated December 5, 2023. The Appeal Panel upheld several decisions of the Tribunal’s Hearing Division. The Hearing Division found Mr. Khan to have engaged in professional misconduct by, among other things, knowingly participating in mortgage fraud and misappropriating client funds from trust accounts in the context of three real estate transactions. After a penalty hearing, the Hearing Division revoked Mr. Khan’s licence to practise law and ordered costs of $132,000. These costs were in addition to $12,000 in costs previously ordered by a motions panel of the Hearing Division.
[2] The Hearing Division’s decision on the merits relied on the evidence of three witnesses and on deemed admissions contained in a 484-paragraph request to admit including 310 documents that the request sought to be deemed authentic. When the Law Society served Mr. Khan with the request to admit, he admitted the truth of three paragraphs and otherwise repeated the same generic response to each paragraph. The response included a general denial of the truth of the facts, an assertion that the alleged facts were privileged information, and an objection to the Law Society Tribunal’s request to admit rule. He did not admit the authenticity of any of the documents.
[3] The panel of the Hearing Division that heard several preliminary motions concluded Mr. Khan’s responses to the request to admit did not meet the requirements of the Tribunal’s deemed admissions rule. It found Mr. Khan had sought “to circumvent the deemed admissions rule entirely and oppose any meaningful attempt at the introduction of evidence over which there is no true dispute”: Law Society of Ontario v. Khan, 2021 ONLSTH 47, at para. 36. It ruled the facts in the request to admit were deemed to be admitted and the documents deemed to be authenticated.
[4] In his appeal to the Appeal Panel, Mr. Khan raised over 30 grounds of appeal. In careful and comprehensive reasons, the Appeal Panel upheld the decisions of the Hearing Division, including its treatment of the deemed admissions. Mr. Khan now repeats and adopts the same submissions before this court and adds additional submissions addressed below. I would dismiss the appeal on the issues raised before the Appeal Panel substantially for the reasons given by the Appeal Panel. I add the following comments on the deemed admissions issue and to address the new issues in this court.
Deemed Admissions
[5] The Appeal Panel noted the Hearing Division’s conclusion that Mr. Khan sought to circumvent the deemed admissions rule and reiterated that it was clear that Mr. Khan “was refusing to engage in the admissions process provided for under [the request to admit rule]. There is no doubt that [Mr. Khan] elected to respond in a manner that was not compliant with the Rule”: Law Society of Ontario v. Khan, 2023 ONLSTA 17, at para. 20.
[6] The finding that Mr. Khan was refusing to engage in the admissions process was amply supported by the record. Mr. Khan provided only general denials and standardized objections to each proposed admission and document even though, as the Hearing Division found, the Law Society was attempting to introduce evidence over which there was no true dispute. Many of the documents and facts the Law Society included in the request to admit were not controversial. The Hearing Division found the documents included registered instruments, title abstracts, pleadings and other publicly available documents. Many of the facts arose from Mr. Khan’s client files or from his emails and correspondence.
[7] Mr. Khan was afforded multiple opportunities to respond to the Tribunal’s deemed admissions rule in a meaningful fashion. When the Law Society received a response from Mr. Khan in which he admitted the authenticity of none of the documents and denied the truth of all but three facts, it brought a motion for an order that the facts and documents were deemed to be true and authentic. The Hearing Division motion panel agreed that Mr. Khan’s response was inadequate but permitted Mr. Khan a further opportunity to respond to the request to admit.
[8] Mr. Khan then provided a further response in which he repeated the same refusals/denials and added objections to the motion panel’s ruling. When the motion panel reconvened, it made an order deeming Mr. Khan to admit the facts and the authenticity of the documents. However, it also expressly left it open to Mr. Khan to rebut any deemed admission or document by raising contradictory evidence at the hearing of the application on the merits. The hearing panel also invited Mr. Khan to present a fresh motion to be relieved of his admissions, but he declined to do so.
[9] This is not a case where a member of the Law Society made reasonable efforts to engage in the request to admit process but included some repetitive responses and denials. Instead, as the underlying decisions found, Mr. Khan’s overall course of conduct amounted to a refusal to engage in the process. The Appeal Panel made no reviewable error in reaching that conclusion and in upholding the Hearing Division’s decision that the facts and documents were deemed to be admitted as true and authentic.
Appeal Panel’s Reasons
[10] Mr. Khan submitted that the Appeal Panel failed to sufficiently address the issues he raised and the cases he cited.
[11] His position on this issue is misguided. The Appeal Panel’s reasons appropriately focused on the most substantive issue Mr. Khan had raised, which was the treatment of his response to the request to admit. The panel’s reasons also addressed multiple other issues Mr. Khan had raised as the panel understood them. As the panel stated at para. 7 of its reasons:
The Lawyer raised more than 30 grounds of appeal in his amended notice of appeal. These are articulated in various ways in the Lawyer’s factum along with additional claims of errors by the motions and hearing panels. We have sought in these reasons for decision to address the issues raised by the Lawyer as we understand them.
[12] It is evident the panel made a thorough effort to comprehensively address the issues Mr. Khan had raised. There was no error in providing brief reasons on issues that were without merit. There also was no requirement for the Appeal Panel to refer to the cases Mr. Khan cited, so long as it properly applied the law, which it did. This ground of appeal is dismissed.
Appeal Panel Order
[13] Mr. Khan’s submission that the Appeal Panel’s order is invalid because it was not signed by three panel members is similarly without merit. The reasons for decision provide the names of the panel members who heard the appeal. The reasons are signed by the chair “for the panel.” Mr. Khan has not provided any authority for the proposition that the names of all three panel members must appear at the end of the document or that the panel members must physically sign the document where the chair has signed on their behalf. This ground of appeal is dismissed.
Disposition
[14] The appeal is dismissed, with costs to the Law Society, payable by Mr. Khan of $8,000, inclusive, payable within thirty days.
_______________________________ O’Brien, J
I agree _______________________________
D.L. Corbett, J
I agree _______________________________
Matheson J.
Released: June 20, 2024
CITATION: Khan v. Law Society of Ontario, 2024 ONSC 3092
DIVISIONAL COURT FILE NO.: DC-23-00000660-0000
DATE: 20240620
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
DIVISIONAL COURT
D.L. Corbett, Matheson and O’Brien JJ
BETWEEN:
MUHAMMAD ASLAM KHAN
Appellant
– and –
LAW SOCIETY OF ONTARIO
Respondent
REASONS FOR DECISION
O’BRIEN, J
Released: June 20, 2024