Regina vs. Parks
Government
Management Fraud
A County Engineer with the County’s Tractor
In January 1974, this case gave me the opportunity to sit with Crown Counsel Rod McLeod at the table through a jury trial. Once again as the last witness, I gave fact evidence of financial transactions regarding the acts of the accused Don Parks as the County Engineer. The Defense argued against the use of an overhead projector and lost. The Defense also argued against the introduction of accounting schedules and lost. The presiding Judge Garth Moore ruled the accounting schedules admissible given what he described as the “veritable blizzard of documents”.
My schedules were essentially chronologies listing the financial transactions related to each charge.
The lesson I learned here was to avoid the use of any descriptive words and to state specifically only the information on the face of the relevant documents. Why? Descriptive words are subjective and reflect bias, the number one enemy for an expert witness.
Fours years later the “Parks” case was referenced in the “Scheel” case that set the precedent for the admissibility of accounting schedules when recognized by the Supreme Court of Ontario because, as they explained it, “The admissibility of evidence of this type does not appear to have been previously considered by any appellate court in Canada in a reported judgment”.
Canadian Precedent: Admissibility of Accounting Summaries and Schedules where Lindquist is the Expert Witness in all three cases:
| First Ruling: | General Sessions in R. v Parks | January 1974 |
| Second Ruling: | General Sessions in R. v Steele/Waddilove | May 1976 |
| Third Ruling: | General Sessions in R. v Scheel | November 1976 |
| Fourth Ruling: | Supreme Court of Ontario in R. v Scheel | May 1978 |
Read First Ruling