Documents reveal Town's lawyers the real winners in Point Park litigation

Newly-released freedom of information productions suggest that, for nearly 30 years, council of the Town of Fort Frances approached the Point Park litigation like an economic development program for law firms. Municipal accounting records show that over 90% of the $5.5 million in taxpayer dollars spent on the unsuccessful litigation (and a related public misinformation campaign) was paid to just two lawyers' firms.

Background

On June 17, 2025, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released a decision dismissing the Town of Fort Frances' claim to ownership of the lands known locally as the Point Park. The court's decision follows the December 2024 hearing of competing motions for summary judgment brought by the parties (being the Town on one side, and the four Agency One First Nations and the federal and provincial government on the other). I wrote about those motions when they were first filed with the court in 2023.

The dismissal of the Town's claim to the Point Park was somewhat predictable to those paying attention - and certainly to those who read my content, as I suggested as much in a January 2024 post to my website (following an earlier motion in the litigation, which the Town also lost), a May 2023 Facebook post (in which I summarized some challenges for the Town's motion for summary judgment), and as I cautioned during my time on council from 2018 to 2022 (including through my June 2021 resignation from the council committee supposedly overseeing the file, due to what I saw as unlawful, undemocratic, and defamatory behaviour behind closed doors).

Unfortunately, no one wanted to listen to those concerns - or apparently to the concerns of the federal or provincial governments, which sided with the First Nations, even after the local riding was flipped to the government side of the Legislature in 2018. Instead, starting in 2021, a majority of the previous council, and later of the current council, cast aside significant progress toward a negotiated resolution. Many community members will recall that that work started in May 2019 with a public commitment to work together to resolve the issues in dispute without resort to litigation.

Now local taxpayers are left with not only the sunk cost of 3 decades of litigation, but are also on the hook for paying the litigation costs of the four First Nations and the provincial and federal governments. One might expect that a 7- or 8-figure costs order is forthcoming. How that liability is accommodated in the next municipal budget has yet to be explained.

The Town Reveals its Total Litigation Costs

In a news release issued on June 24, 2025, the Town committed to publish the total amount spent by municipal taxpayers to fund this nearly 30-year litigation. It subsequently followed through, revealing a total price tag of $5,487,705.25, or an average of $219,508.21 annually from 2000 to 2024. No further detail was provided beyond those figures.

An April 5, 1978 caption in the Fort Frances Times suggests that the glory days of what was then known as Pither's Point Park had passed it by even then - nearly 50 years ago.

Anticipating the public interest in understanding the economics of this litigation, I submitted a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act shortly after the court's decision was released. My request asked for not just the total of the municipality's litigation spending, but a breakdown by year, between the 'two-chain' and park litigation cases (read more about that distinction here), and a breakdown by vendor and professional service provider. Basically, I wanted to know "who got all of this money?" and "which councils made these poor financial decisions?".

The Town provided a response to my request on July 28, 2025 (for the very reasonable fee of $240, I might add).

A Breakdown of the Town's Litigation Spend

Three observations emerge from the Town's freedom of information productions.

First, the $5,487,705.25 in total spending appears to exclude the costs awarded to the municipality in the 'two chain' case in 2018, in the amount of $1,396,281 (you can read the costs decision in the 'two chain' case here). This means that the net spend was lower, once those funds are accounted for. I note that the $5.5 million is inclusive of $35,000 in costs paid to the other parties following the Town's unsuccessful January 2024 motion decision I referred to above.

Second, of the nearly $5.5 million spent on the litigation, the chief recipients of these funds were the Town's lawyers:

• Derksen Professional Corporation (the Town's local legal counsel until its principal lawyer's retirement in the previous term of council) received payments totalling $3,049,945.17; and

• Law firms associated with Jerome Morse, a personal injury and commercial litigation lawyer based in Toronto, received payments totalling $1,970,124.95.

Together, these two line items total $5,020,070.25 and account for over 91% of the $5,487,705.25 in spending on the litigation. Spending at other law firms is also reflected in the data released by the Town. The amounts are all presented net of HST.

Third, the year-by-year spending data contradicts the Town's current messaging, which tries to pin responsibility on previous councils. In its June 2025 statement, the Town "commends" the current council "whose unanimous decision to not appeal ... is best reflective of the values and goals of the Town of Fort Frances". The statement contrasts this principled benevolence with the previous 7 councils ("the attitudes and opinions held at the inception of this endeavour are not the same today"), which had been instructing the Town's lawyers until 2022.

But the numbers tell a somewhat different story. Nearly one-fifth of the total spending ($905,535.77) was incurred by the current council, over a period accounting for just 3 years of the 27-year legal saga. In 2024 alone, this council spent $411,783.54 on the litigation. None of the Town's communications have explained why they did this and did not put the brakes on the litigation if doing so is, in fact, consistent with the "values and goals of the Town of Fort Frances".

Remember: the summary judgment motions that resulted in the June 2025 decision were still in their infancy at the start of the current term (the Town's motion is dated August 22, 2022, which was within the 'lame duck' phase of the previous council). It was this council's decision to see the litigation through. "Values" that guide decisions are usually longstanding, demonstrable ideals, not deathbed confessions that contradict 3 decades of behaviour and reckless spending.

Notably, litigation spending appears to have been lowest under the previous council (2018-22, when negotiations were being taken most seriously), with about 70% of the total spending arising under the gavel of Mayor Roy Avis (2006-2018). That said, determining these figures on a council-by-council basis is not an exact science because we do not know exactly when legal fees were incurred versus when they were paid compared to the exact start and end dates of each council term.

The documents produced by the Town also indicate that records were not located from prior to 2000, and no expense items were available for 2000-2003 in the Town's ledgers. It also appears that entries were not always clearly designated between the park and 'two-chain' litigation, making it difficult to provide a precise analysis for each of the two related cases.

Final Comments

It is noted that the Town will likely continue to incur some litigation costs associated with the file as the parties will have to prepare and argue their costs submissions unless they can negotiate and agree on costs.

But come budget time again, it is important to remember that some of the same council members who have tightened the purse strings, cut library budgets, reduced services, and made the community raise funds and find donations for basic recreational amenities have had no issue contributing hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars annually to fight losing, racially-animated legal battles when clear avenues to compromise and collaborate were on the table.