On June 12, the Municipality of Pontiac council decided that based on the legal opinion of RPGL lawyers, they would not pursue the recouperation of legal fees from former councillor and mayor Eddie McCann.
The RPGL lawyers are the same ones who represented the municipality at trial against McCann.
The McCann saga started in 2013 after McCann lost the mayoral race to Roger Larose.
In the intervening months, McCann did not get his campaign finances in order and was declared ineligible to sit as a councillor.
Despite this, he ran for a council seat in a byelection in 2015 and won the seat for ward two.
As a result, the municipal council at the time asked a judge to disqualify McCann.
This began a long, drawn-out legal battle that finally ended last week with the council’s decision.
The McCann legal saga has been a hot-button issue in the Municipality of Pontiac. THE EQUITY received several letters on the issue from concerned citizens.
Even the municipality’s decision not to recoup legal costs received scrutiny.
An anonymous letter from a group of concerned citizens was circulated to local media and councillors imploring the municipal council to recover McCann’s legal fees, for which the municipality is responsible.
The costs associated with both the municipality’s legal fees as well as McCann’s are around $74,000.
For a small municipality, that’s a healthy amount of money that could go a long way.
But the expert opinion of RPGL lawyers was that the municipality had little to no chance of recouperating those legal fees.
The trial judge noted that McCann did not deliberately or intentionally try to cause harm to the municipality.
The judge also noted that since this case was so unique, it actually helped advance the law to more stable footing.
Hopefully, despite the heated rhetoric that often accompanied this case, it appears the municipality can finally move on.
Some in the municipality will be upset that their council decided not to recoup legal fees from McCann, and they have that right.
But at the same time, if McCann thought he was in the right, he had every right to fight for his rights.
Regardless, the decision had been rendered and all parties have to live with it.
Hopefully the residents of the Municipality of Pontiac can move forward as one, and put this whole ugly saga behind them.
Chris Lowrey
