{"id":577,"date":"2014-01-29T15:27:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T20:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=577"},"modified":"2014-01-29T15:27:38","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T20:27:38","slug":"judge-reserves-decision-in-unusual-estate-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=577","title":{"rendered":"Judge reserves decision in unusual estate case"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TELEGRAPH<\/a>Judge reserves decision in unusual estate case<\/span><\/h1>\n

JENNIFER PRITCHETT Telegraph-Journal <\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/span> January 28, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Malcolm Ross attended the second day of the trial as an observer. Paul Fromm in foreground<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Photo: Jennifer Pritchett\/Telegraph-Journal<\/span><\/p>\n

SAINT JOHN \u2013 A Court of Queen\u2019s Bench judge has reserved his decision on whether a Saint John man\u2019s will is legal and can bequeath about $250,000 in rare coins and antiquities to an American neo-Nazi group.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harry Robert McCorkill left his estate to the National Alliance when he died in 2004. A decade later, his sister, some rights groups and the province of New Brunswick went to court to prevent the money from flowing to the white supremacist, anti-Semitic organization.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trial into the matter, held Monday and Tuesday, saw lawyers from both sides make arguments in an unusual legal case that weighs peoples\u2019 individual right to leave their estate to whomever \u2013 and whatever type of organization \u2013 they choose against the court\u2019s ability to intervene in special circumstances that are deemed against \u201cpublic policy.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s little case law on the subject and in many ways, the debate around the McCorkill estate is unique and breaks new legal ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan Delaquis, a lawyer for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, told the court Tuesday that the gift, if it\u2019s permitted to stand, will be \u201cdetrimental to the Jewish community\u201d and will result in an erosion of Canadian values because the National Alliance has a mandate of hate and is a well-known white supremacist group.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe submit in this case that the public interest must outweigh the wish of Mr. McCorkill,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Marc-Antoine Chiasson, a lawyer for Isabelle Rose McCorkill, argued that one need only look at the National Alliance\u2019s own handbook to see firsthand how it purports a racist message.<\/span><\/p>\n

He read excerpts of the small handbook in court on Monday, highlighting how it points to \u201cwhite\u201d living spaces with white schools and residential areas with the overall view to create a white world. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chiasson also pointed to the words of National Alliance founder William Luther Pierce and described his books, Hunter and The Turner Diaries, which were written under the pseudonym \u201cAndrew Macdonald,\u201d as repugnant.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Andy Lodge, a lawyer for the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE), told the court Tuesday that the fact that an organization may be considered \u201cmorally reprehensible\u201d should have no impact on whether it can be a beneficiary of an estate. He pointed out that there are no laws prohibiting even a serial killer or a drug dealer to receive assets from a will.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the court to evaluate whether a beneficiary such as the National Alliance is against \u201cpublic policy,\u201d he argued, would open \u201cPandora\u2019s box.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He said it would do more harm than good if the courts started assessing a beneficiary\u2019s past or try to predict how they would spend the money they receive from a will.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lodge described the court debate over McCorkill\u2019s will as an \u201cexercise in futility.\u201d He argued there is no legal basis to challenge the will because it\u2019s valid, follows New Brunswick\u2019s Wills Act and contains no words that are contrary to Canada\u2019s public policy. <\/span><\/p>\n

The lawyer said he knows of no law that would prohibit a living person in Canada from giving money to the National Alliance.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Hughes, the lawyer for the executor of the estate Fred Streed, argued that the application to prevent the disposition of McCorkill\u2019s estate to the National Alliance should be dismissed. <\/span><\/p>\n

Isabelle McCorkill didn\u2019t attend the trial in Saint John nor did any representative from the National Alliance, a West-Virginia based organization.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chiasson, her lawyer, has said that the legal battle over her brother\u2019s estate has never been about the money, but rather, about preventing it from going to a neo-Nazi group. <\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine Fawcett, who represents the League for Human Rights of B\u2019nai Brith Canada, also argued that the gift to the National Alliance is \u201ccompletely against public policy\u201d and pointed to the connection between hate propaganda and violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

McCorkill\u2019s estate includes, among other items, a collection of hundreds of Greek, Roman, and Italian coins \u2013 some dating back to 525 BC \u2013 that he amassed since the 1970s. Some items were once displayed at the University of Saskatchewan\u2019s Antiquities Museum and a release from that institution in 1997 described him as a well-travelled collector and a chemist who spent time at MIT and the Smithsonian Institution.<\/span><\/p>\n

Little else is known about the man or why he lived in Saint John, where he moved about a year before his death. He lived quietly in a townhouse in Millidgeville and after he died at home in 2004, his body remained at the Saint John Regional Hospital for nearly two weeks while the authorities tried to track down his next of kin.<\/span><\/p>\n

The National Alliance paid for his funeral and hired Malcolm Ross and William Ross of Moncton to transport, store and take inventory of his assets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Malcolm Ross, who attended McCorkill\u2019s court hearing in Saint John on Tuesday with his brother, was the focus of a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that found that the former Moncton-area teacher whose off-duty writings claimed Christians were under attack by an international Jewish conspiracy, had in fact \u201cpoisoned\u201d the educational environment. The ruling upheld a human rights board of inquiry that ordered Ross into a non-teaching job.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outside court, he told the Telegraph-Journal that he was there to \u201cobserve,\u201d but declined to comment on his connection to the McCorkill matter.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judge reserves decision in unusual estate case JENNIFER PRITCHETT Telegraph-Journal January 28, 2014   Malcolm Ross attended the second day of the trial as an observer. Paul Fromm in foreground Photo: Jennifer Pritchett\/Telegraph-Journal SAINT JOHN \u2013 A Court of Queen\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[190,219,129,192,87,38,128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}