Taxes in Amherstburg could skyrocket if the town loses the more than $13 million in lawsuits it’s facing, the town’s chief administrative officer has warned new councilors.

John Miceli this month brought town council up to speed on the fiscal realities of the litigation the town is involved in. “Should the town be unsuccessful in defending its position and awards are made to the claimants, the impact to the town and residents may be significant,” Miceli said in a report to councilors.

Reached Tuesday, Miceli said insurance will only partially insulate the town should the town lose the suits.

There are currently four lawsuits against the town. The largest is for $9 million in damages plus interest and costs, brought in late 2013 by the insurer for 129 residents whose basements flooded in 2011.

Facca Incorporated brought a pair of lawsuits in 2013 – one for $2.7 million plus taxes, interest and costs, and another for nearly $1.24 million plus interest and costs — related to its construction contract for the wastewater treatment plant.

The oldest outstanding lawsuit was filed by Sherway Contracting in 2010 over loss of profit on the reconstruction of Laird Avenue.

Miceli has provided council with what he calls a “private and confidential memo” giving details of each lawsuit. The memo will not be made public, Miceli said.

The town doesn’t have its own lawyers to defend lawsuits. It contracts out the work to Mousseau DeLuca McPherson Prince. In the past five years alone, the town has spent more than $1.14 million on lawyers’ fees, an average of more than $228,000 per year.

The town has insurance to protect itself, with a deductible of $25,000 on each claim, Miceli said Tuesday. But there’s a cap of $5 million on any one payout.

“That’s an issue with that $9 million lawsuit,” Miceli said.

To put the value of the lawsuits in perspective, Miceli said, each $180,000 the town has to raise equals a one-per-cent increase to the property tax levy.

He said it’s important information for new councilors to have.

“We wanted to make sure they were aware and the general public is aware of where the town stands.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or 519-255-5509

A criminal lawyer has been charged with theft after an alleged shoplifting incident at a local drug store.

Paul Esco, 61, was arrested Saturday at the Shoppers Drug Mart at 2109 Ottawa St. Windsor police arrested him after being alerted by an employee who said Esco had been seen attempting to leave the store without paying for Polysporin and Liquid Bandage.

Esco’s case was spoken to in Ontario court Tuesday where a charge of theft under $5,000 was formally laid against him.

Esco, who was given a notice to attend Windsor police headquarters to be fingerprinted, has not yet appeared in court.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, a distraught Esco said he worried about his reputation. He said he intends to fight the charge.

His lawyer, Daniel Topp, said he has yet to see any reports outlining what evidence police have.

“There was a misunderstanding and we’re going to work it out in court,” Topp said.

Esco advertises that he has been a lawyer for more than 20 years, specializing in defending theft and shoplifting charges among other criminal offences.

The Law Society of Upper Canada, the licensing body for lawyers in Ontario, lists Esco as a member in good standing with no current or past serious infractions that have resulted in disciplinary proceedings against him.

Esco is to make his first court appearance Feb. 10. His lawyer can appear on his behalf.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Windsor and Essex County’s first baby of 2015 does not yet have a name, but his daddy’s is well-known in the area.

Rabbi Sholom Galperin and his wife, Rivka, welcomed their fifth child at 12:07 a.m. Thursday. The little boy entered the world at Windsor Regional Hospital’s Metropolitan campus, where the maternity ward on New Year’s Eve was nearly as hectic as Times Square.

Twelve babies were born there Dec. 31. Just one minute after the Galperin baby was born, another woman gave birth to a baby girl. By noon, yet another five babies had been born.

There were 277 babies born at Windsor Regional Hospital last month, bringing the total for 2014 to 3,609.

Rivka said her baby was “way late.” Her husband chuckled. The due date had been 11 days earlier.

Rivka, 31, had been scheduled to be induced and anxiously waited by the phone all day Wednesday to be told to come to the hospital. When she learned the maternity ward was too busy to accommodate her, she resigned herself to the fact she would have to wait another day. By 7 p.m. she decided she would just go to bed early.

Then the phone rang.

Her baby was delivered with the help of a midwife from the Windsor Midwifery Collective of Essex County. He weighed in at seven pounds and four ounces.

He is the first of the Galperin children to be born in Canada.

The Galperins came to Windsor five years ago after Rabbi Sholom took over as the leader of the local Orthodox Jewish community at Congregation Shaarey Zedek. After moving to the area from Miami, he commuted from Detroit until the family could live in Canada.

The other Galperin children, three girls aged 9, 6, and 4, and a boy aged 2½, were born in the U.S.

Holding the tiny newborn in his wife’s hospital room Thursday, Galperin said his other son will be especially pleased with the newest addition to the family.

“He will have someone to throw a ball with. No more Barbie dolls.”

The first baby of 2015 was feted with a bag of gifts from the hospital and a basket of goodies from all4mamas, a local support group for mothers that boasts 1,700 members.

The Galperins will name their son, according to Jewish tradition, in eight days’ time after the boy is circumcised, the rabbi explained.

“We try to find a name of a grandparent or a holy rabbi. He will have a Hebrew name.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Residual burning embers in a charcoal barbecue are responsible for more than $500,000 in damage to a store in downtown Kingsville New Year’s Eve.

An OPP officer on routine patrol smelled smoke downtown and discovered the fire at the Towne Shoppe about 9 p.m. Wednesday. Firefighters quickly got the blaze under control, but were on the scene for more than five hours, until 2:30 a.m. Thursday.

When firefighters arrived, the blaze was raging in the back of the store. The heat was so intense in the building, all the clothing had fallen to the floor after the hangers had melted, Kingsville fire Chief Bob Kissner said Thursday.

“The structure is repairable but the interior is severely burned. None of the stock will be salvageable.”

Kissner said the fire is still under investigation, but the cause has been attributed to a barbecue in the alley behind the store.

“The fire originated from the exterior. The stockroom was well-involved when we got there.”

Smoke also got into shops on either of the burnt-out store.

“It’s a significant loss,” Kissner said.

Thirty firefighters battled the blaze. Kingsville has a volunteer service, so many of the firefighters had been at New Year’s Eve parties, arriving in dress clothes they shed for firefighting gear.

With every piece of firefighting equipment from the south station as well as a pumper truck from the Cottam station in use, Leamington’s fire department spent the night on standby.

Kingsville’s history books are filled with tales of fires ripping through commercial buildings downtown. Kissner said there was a “real fear” that could have happened again with the Towne Shoppe fire, but the blaze was caught early enough that adjacent buildings were spared.

Main Street near Division Street was closed to traffic for about three hours.

The store’s owners, Paul and Sharon Jones of Amherstburg, were at the site Thursday assessing the damage. They took photos of the charred interior and walked past the debris piled in the alley out back.

The couple opened the Kingsville shop in 1998, a second location to the Town Shoppe they have operated in Amherstburg since 1970.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

If you’ve ever played baseball in Riverside or stay active in your golden years through organized sports, you likely have Louis Deschamps to thank.

The lifelong athlete and sports organizer was a founder of the Riverside Minor Baseball Association and the Windsor-Essex County Senior Sports Organization. He died Tuesday at the age of 82.

“He was very involved, a die-hard,” said Ray Dzombak, who was president of the Riverside Minor Baseball Association in the 1960s. Deschamps helped found the group in 1958 and recruited Dzombak to take the reins.

Deschamps coached for 25 years. He usually coached 15-year-old boys, but coached kids as young as five.

He helped bring girls’ baseball to Riverside, even before he had five daughters of his own.

Deschamps preferred to work behind the scenes and was a master at recruiting talent, his wife Arleen recalled Friday. He was never president of the groups he founded. “He stayed in the background,” Arlene said, explaining that her husband liked to take on roles where he could rope her into taking over some of his duties.

“When he was secretary, I did his work. When he was treasurer, I did his work, too,” she joked.

She recalls going door-to-door throughout Riverside with Louis selling tags to raise money for the fledgling baseball association. Later, she and her husband brought electronic bingo to Windsor, Arleen said. Charity bingos at the Tivoli helped Riverside baseball’s bank accounts swell to levels that would be enviable today, decades later.

Arleen and Louis grew up across the street from each other on Jos. Janisse Avenue. Arleen’s brother, Roger, was Louis’s best friend.

They married in 1955 at Our Lady of Guadaloupe Church. This June would have marked their 60^th wedding anniversary.

Louis was the youngest of 14 children. Appropriately, he was known as Louis XIV.

For their 45^th wedding anniversary, Louis and Arleen went to France. When they visited Versailles, Arleen took her husband’s picture under the statue of his namesake.

When Louis attended St. Joseph’s High School, in the late ’40s and early 1950s, he was twice named male athlete of the year. When he graduated, Louis was named most likely to succeed.

As a fervent Montreal Canadiens fan, Maurice Richard was his idol.

While he played and coached hockey, baseball was his true passion.

Louis would always boast how he had coached Joel Quenneville, head coach of Chicago Blackhawks.

Louis and his wife would usually winter in Florida. The first year they decided to stay home, Louis talked his wife into billeting a Windsor Spitfire.

That year, they took in Cam Janssen, who plays with the New Jersey Devils today.

The Deschamps girls all attended Brennan high school. Louis and Arleen were active parents there. Louis founded the Father and Son Sports Night and Arlene started a fashion show fundraiser.

Louis worked at Chrysler Canada for 35 years. In 1988, Louis helped found the Windsor-Essex County Senior Sports Organization. He played baseball with the club past his 70^th birthday. “He played ball and I watched every game,” Arleen said.

When he wasn’t playing sports, Louis flew remote-control airplanes he built himself. But his true love was family and he was a doting grandparent to his five grandchildren, now aged 15 to 29.

“He adored every one of them,” Arleen said.

A funeral mass will be held Saturday at St. Anne’s Church at 10:30 a.m., with visitation beforehand beginning at 9:30 a.m. Online condolences can be shared at www.windsorchapel.com.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

A violent criminal wanted for beating a man so badly he needed emergency brain surgery was arrested sitting in a recliner smoking a cigarette, his Superior Court trial heard Monday.

There had been a manhunt for Michael Wilfred Allard in June 2013 after a savage robbery near Howard Avenue and Erie Street. Police sent out bulletins identifying Allard as the suspect in the case, local media broadcasting the photo of the man police described as “dangerous.”

Then, three days later, a police officer involved in another case happened to spot Allard and his girlfriend walking on Church Street. Const. Sean Martin radioed in what he’d seen. A pursuit, involving at least six police officers and a police dog was on.

Allard, 31, is on trial, charged with aggravated assault, robbery, theft of his mother’s car, two counts of possession of stolen property, theft, fraud and attempted fraud. The charges came after a man was viciously attacked and robbed June 5, 2013.

Stefanie Alicia Robinson, 24, was charged along with Allard. She pleaded guilty in October to three of the charges – the car theft and the two counts of possessing stolen property. She was sentenced to 40 days in jail.

Windsor police Sgt. John Virban, a dog handler, testified he had been involved in the hunt for Allard. Earlier, he and his German shepherd, Ouza, had searched an address on Hickory Road, Virban testified. When the dispatch came from Church Street, he and Ouza were off again.

Virban testified he was in his police-issued SUV, driving southbound on Church approaching Vera Place when, in his rear-view mirror, he spotted a couple walking hand-in-hand. He made a U-turn in the intersection and the couple broke into a sprint.

Virban said he saw the man and woman run between two buildings. He and Ouza followed them to 520 Church where Allard and Robinson were arrested at gunpoint. A tenant unlocked the door for police and Ouza went in first. Virban said Ouza’s hackles were up and he was barking, indicating someone was inside.

The couple was found in the attic, sitting in reclining arm chairs, smoking cigarettes.

Allard has been behind bars since his arrest.

At the time, Allard had just been released from jail for a violent robbery of a gay man. Allard, and accomplice Stephen Lambert, were sentenced in 2011 to 22 months in jail in addition to the 14 months they’d spent in pre-trial custody.

In 2002, Allard was convicted after hitting a pedestrian and attempting to run over an Amherstburg police officer while fleeing. He led LaSalle police on a high-speed chase that ended with a crash.

Allard, who admitted he had stolen his mother’s car, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, failing to stop for police and failing to stop for an accident.

Allard is arguing his Charter rights were violated during his 2013 the arrest. Among other complaints, court has heard police entered the apartment without a warrant.

Those arguments are being heard this week, the first week of what is expected to be a five-week trial.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

A Windsor lawyer accused of misappropriating up to $15 million from clients has once again lost his licence while his case is before a disciplinary panel.

Claudio Martini, 50, was to have a hearing this week before a tribunal of the Law Society of Upper Canada, the licensing body for lawyers in the province. Martini had a lawyer appear on his behalf Monday asking for an adjournment.

The tribunal granted the adjournment, but also suspended Martini’s licence in the meantime. His trust accounts are frozen and he is unable to provide legal advice to clients.

“We are satisfied… that there are reasonable grounds for believing that there is a significant risk of harm to members of the public, or to the public interest in the administration of justice,” the tribunal ruled.

Martini’s licence was suspended in October after he was found guilty of professional misconduct. Martini was found to have lied to his client, Prestressed Systems Inc., failing to move litigation forward, not advising the client of deadlines for filing documents with the court and advising the company’s representatives that pretrial dates had been scheduled when none existed.

Martini also represented a numbered company affiliated with PSI. In his work for the company between 2006 and 2008, Martini failed to follow the client’s instructions, including failing to launch an action on its behalf.

Martini’s licence was suspended for seven months and he was to pay $30,000 in costs to the law society by Dec. 31. Martini appealed and, pending the outcome, his licence suspension was temporarily lifted before it took effect.

Last month, the law society went to court to have Martini’s business accounts frozen. It was said to be investigating allegations that $1 million was missing from Martini’s trust account and that he had misappropriated up to $15 million of clients’ money.

Windsor police have also launched a criminal investigation.

While its investigation continues, the law society asked the tribunal to suspend Martini’s licence on an “interlocutory basis.” The law society also wanted to keep secret a particular document being used in Martini’s prosecution.

The tribunal granted both requests on an interim basis.

Martini’s case is to be dealt with by the tribunal on Jan. 23. Martini has until Jan.16 to file documents he intends to use in his defence.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Jay Katz is coming home.

After seven years away from the city where he grew up, Katz will return to Windsor next month to become the Windsor Jewish Community Centre’s new executive director.

“I think Windsor’s a great place,” Katz said Thursday from Toronto where he has his own business as an executive coach and management consultant to not-for-profit organizations.

Longtime WJCC executive director Harvey Kessler is retiring this spring . A team led by WJCC president Ronna Warsh recruited Katz to fill the void.

“This is a good news story,” Warsh said. “We’re delighted to have Jay back in the community.”

When Katz last lived here, he had a fairly high profile. He is the former executive director of the Windsor Symphony. “I’m looking forward to hearing that wonderful orchestra again,” he said.

While with the symphony, he was also on WJCC’s board of directors.

He left Windsor for Edmonton, where he was the head of the symphony there. Starting his own business landed him back in his birthplace of Toronto.

Katz’s family moved from Toronto to Windsor when he was seven. He lived here right through university.

He did his MBA in London at the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. Then came a whirlwind of jobs – he worked as a banker on Bay Street, then Boston, moved to Los Angeles where he catered parties and sold antiques – before moving back to Windsor.

Katz still has lots of family in the city – a brother, sister-in-law, nephews and cousins – and plans to settle in for the long haul.

Windsor’s Jewish community is “home” Katz said. He’s been involved with the WJCC as long as he can remember. “I went to their day camp as a kid.” As a teen, he played basketball in the gym on Wednesday nights. When he was 19, he spent his weekends inside the Ouellette Avenue centre as a counsellor in the “tween program.” He remembers accompanying 12 and 13-year-olds to Cedar Point and on other excursions.

Katz said Windsor’s Jewish community is just as vibrant today as he remembers as a kid. The senior residence tower adjoins a kosher restaurant open to the public. There are multiple synagogues, including one led by a new, young rabbi who is connected to a robust group of Jewish students at the University of Windsor.

“The community is a success story,” Katz said.

A decade ago, Jews lamented how their community was aging and had few newcomers rejuvenating its ranks. “I think we can celebrate the fact that that assessment didn’t play out,” Katz said.

The Jewish population in the city has stayed stable at about 1,500 over the last 10 years.

Warsh said, as older members of the Jewish community have passed on, younger ones have moved to the city. Older folks have moved here, too, to be closer to family or just to enjoy their golden years with disposable income after selling homes in big cities like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.

The Jewish community can be proud of the “legacy” it has built, Katz said. “We just need to preserve and maintain that going forward.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Down the hall from the row of courtrooms where parents fight for custody of their children appeared an unusual oasis of calm Friday.

Students from the Canadian College of Health Science and Technology assembled in a meeting room on the fifth floor of Ontario court to offer free massages.

“People are stressed,” said organizer Sue Rice, manager of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project. The event, which will take place on two more Friday afternoons this month, is designed to raise awareness of how stressful it is to represent yourself in court.

“Court is a stressful situation for anyone. That’s especially true for self-represented litigants,” Rice said.

The event is an offshoot of research led by Distinguished University Professor Julie Macfarlane, who teaches law at the University of Windsor. Macfarlane in 2011 began studying the growing phenomenon of people representing themselves in family and civil cases.

Macfarlane’s research found that up to 80 per cent of cases involved self-litigation. In 75 per cent of those cases, self-represented litigants were up against lawyers on the other side.

The justice system isn’t designed for people with no legal training, regardless of how well-educated they are, Macfarlane said. Self-reps bog down what is already an overburdened system through no fault of their own.

More than half of self-represented litigants had never intended to represent themselves, but do so “out of necessity,” Macfarlane said. They had hired lawyers, but had simply run out of money.

“We found the reasons why people represent themselves were complex, but almost always financial.”

Macfarlane said self-reps, as they’re called, are treated with contempt by the court system. One self-rep spoke of being “branded a troublemaker” from the moment he walked up to a clerk to file initial paperwork. Others told of the derision and downright incivility they faced from staff, lawyers and even judges.

In nearly 300 interviews with self-represented litigants in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, hostility was a common theme, Macfarlane said. But stress, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder long after their cases concluded, was pervasive.

Macfarlane said, while she concluded her research in 2013 and published a report on it last May, she is astounded that she is still getting calls from people wanting to tell their stories.

One was Cynthia Eagan, a former librarian in Detroit who told tales of dealing with frazzled patrons doing research for their court cases.

Now studying to become a registered massage therapist in Windsor, Eagan approached Macfarlane’s project manager about offering free massages to raise awareness of the plight of the self-represented.

“I’ve seen it,” Eagan said, massaging court worker Junie Windsor’s hand Friday.

Myles Cushman had just come out of court when he heard free massages were being offered down the hall.

Cushman came in awash with relief. Representing himself in a family matter, he had been bracing for a protracted court battle. “Luckily, it wasn’t as big a deal as I thought,” he said.

Macfarlane said the majority of family court issues are settled before trial. But self-reps need to know how to negotiate the system to stay out of court.

“We need more settlement-oriented services.”

Macfarlane is doing her part. She has launched a website, representingyourselfcanada.com, offering primers on topics like courtroom decorum. She writes a blog and tweets, too.

And she still allows self-reps – more than 500 and counting — to sign onto her project.

No one involved in Macfarlane’s research project is naïve enough to think a 10-minute massage will erase the stress self-reps are under. But raising awareness of the number of self-reps might spur lawyers into offering innovative services like “coaching” clients on how to handle parts of their cases themselves, Macfarlane said.

“The bottom line is we need to find a way to make legal services more affordable in Canada.”

The free mini-massages will be offered on Jan. 23 and 30 from 1 to 4 p.m.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Kathleen Pringle, a legal secretary in the Crown Attorney’s office. Pringle sprung out of her chair and dashed down the hall Friday upon for the chance to have her shoulders kneaded for 10 minutes during her workday.

“Anyone in this building is probably dealing with stress and could use this.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

With a single punch, Michael Wilfred Allard delivered catastrophic effect.

Allard, a Windsor man with a long history of violent crime, put a man in a coma June 5, 2013 after robbing him of a laptop and gold bracelet.

Michael Wilfred Allard

He was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for the aggravated assault on Jim Meilleur. With credit for time served, Allard, 31, will spend nine more months behind bars.

Meilleur, now 54, was a drug addict with cash-flow problems. Meilleur had been with Allard at the Economy Exchange, a Wyandotte Street pawn shop. Meilleur had just purchased a $225 bracelet after getting his sister’s laptop out of hock and Allard agreed to give him a ride home.

On the way Allard put him out of the car, stealing the laptop and bracelet. Allard punched Meilleur in the face, breaking his nose and causing the man to strike his head on the ground.

In court Friday, defence lawyer Kirk Munroe said Allard did not intend to hurt Meilleur so badly. “He has been portrayed, especially in the media, as a violent and dangerous man, but he is a human being and he does have feelings and he has remorse for the harm he has caused.”

Allard himself apologized to Meilleur and his family in court.

Meilleur underwent emergency brain surgery and was in a coma for four days. Doctors gave him a 50/50 chance of survival.

Meilleur spent three months in hospital and to this day suffers severe headaches, hearing loss, problems with balance and memory loss doctors say is permanent.

He can’t live alone and visits his family doctor and a psychiatrist monthly.

“I am not the person I used to be,” Meilleur said.

Kerwin brokered a plea bargain with Allard after 2½ days of testimony into what was to be a five-week trial. The Crown’s case was fraught with evidentiary problems, Kerwin conceded. Meilleur’s brain injury has caused him to give inconsistent versions of his encounter with Allard.

Meilleur’s sister, Jackie, praised “amazing police work” for the capture of Allard and his accomplice Stefanie Alicia Robinson just three days after Meilleur was found near death on a sidewalk.

“We could never be satisfied with any sentence because of the permanent damage, but at least he’s not walking away scot-free.”

Robinson, 24, pleaded guilty in October to her role in the crime and was sentenced to 7½ months, all but one month served in pre-sentence custody.

Allard has a long history of violent crime dating back to his teen years. In 2010, he and accomplice Stephen Lambert committed a violent robbery on a gay man. Despite the pair hurling homophobic slurs at the victim, prosecutors weren’t able to prove it was a hate crime. Allard and Lambert were sentenced to 22 months in jail in addition to the 14 months they’d spent in pre-trial custody.

In 2002, Allard was convicted after hitting a pedestrian and attempting to run over an Amherstburg police officer to flee. He led LaSalle police on a high-speed chase that ended with a crash. Allard, who admitted he had stolen his mother’s car, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, failing to stop for police and failing to stop for an accident.

Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas warned Allard that he is “a prime candidate” to be declared a dangerous offender someday. Such a designation could keep him behind bars indefinitely.

“There are many reasons why you should not reoffend, but that one should be at the forefront of your mind.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Kingsville’s Kevin Franklin is flying high, literally and figuratively.

Monday he was taking a flight lesson in the skies above his new hometown of Seattle, Wash. A week earlier, the design director for Microsoft’s latest offering in the Halo franchise was named one of Forbes Magazines’ 30 Under 30 for the gaming industry.

“I’ve certainly been getting a lot of attention,” Franklin said in a phone interview on his way to work at Microsoft’s 343 Industries. There, he is leading the design of Halo 5: Guardians, set to be released this year.

Each year, Forbes looks for the brightest young stars in a variety of fields. This year, they selected 20 industries and picked the 30 up-and-comers in each.

Franklin, 29, said the magazine has interviewed him for articles on gaming in the past. He was contacted last summer about the 30 Under 30 feature, was vetted by a panel of judges and learned late last year he would be included in this month’s edition.

Franklin’s proud mother, Catherine, is a teacher at Harrow Public School. She said her “precocious” son showed entrepreneurial spirit from a young age.

Selling apples in front of the town liquor store with fellow Cub Scouts one year, he didn’t just rely on a cute uniform and smile. He collected recipe cards for apple liquer and handed those out in exchange for donations as well.

“Your son is a born salesman,” his mother recalls the store manager telling her.

Franklin launched his career in computing in high school. He got his first computer in Grade 9, joined Kingsville District High School’s robotics team and learned to weld.

When school staff needed tech support, they wouldn’t call the board office, they’d call Franklin.

But not all his ventures were virtuous, he said with a chuckle. Franklin would burn discs and sell them to classmates out of his backpack. For kicks, he’d hack into his parents’ email accounts.

“Kids get into trouble different ways, I guess.”

At the age of 16, Franklin and a friend opened a business in downtown Kingsville for gamers. Called the LANST@TION, it consisted of eight computers hooked up to a server. Kids would rent time to play multiplayer games.

Franklin laughs looking back. “We used the @ symbol instead of an A. We thought that was so good.”

After high school, Franklin built motherboards for greenhouse computers while taking courses for his three-year diploma from the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

His first job in gaming was as a tester for EA Games. He was the technical engineer for Need for Speed, writing code and debugging the programming.

Next, he went to work for an independent studio where he developed a Navy Seal game. “My grandmother thought I worked for Marineland,” he said of his beloved grandma, Mary Leach, whom he visits every Christmas.

He joined Microsoft’s 343 Industries after a stint as the lead designer at an independent studio in B.C.

He led the design team for Halo 4 and now oversees the work on the next edition of the wildly popular game.

“People think I go to work and play games all day,” he says. When pressed, he admits he does spend three to four hours of each workday playing. But “it’s not just for fun,” he says, explaining it’s a critical exercise to find glitches that require tweaks in the programming.

He travels the globe as the face of Halo, giving presentations and accepting awards at games festivals.

“It’s a great job.”

See what Halo 5: Guardians is all about:

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

The Ministry of the Attorney General has pulled the plug on an unconventional program offered at a Windsor courthouse this month.

For three Fridays in January, students from the Canadian College of Health Science and Technology were to offer free massages on the fifth floor of the Ontario court building. The massages were to raise awareness of the stresses faced by self-represented litigants trying to navigate the justice system without the help of a lawyer.

After the first session Friday, the students were informed they would not be welcomed back. “We weren’t given any reason,” said Julie Macfarlane, a University of Windsor professor behind the National Self-Represented Litigants Project which sponsored the massage sessions.

“We were informed that the two subsequent Fridays would not be going ahead.”

The regional senior judge did not return calls for comment. Similarly, Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Attorney General,  said he would be unable to provide comment Friday.

The mini-massage clinics had been arranged through the ministry’s local representative.

The massage clinics were an offshoot of research Macfarlane launched in 2011 into the growing phenomenon of people representing themselves in family and civil cases. Macfarlane’s research found that up to 80 per cent of cases involved self-litigation.

Many of the self-represented litigants had begun with lawyers, but ran out of money to pay them. The self-reps reported being treated with contempt by the judicial system.

The massages were to be offered Jan. 23 and 30 to litigants, court staff and lawyers.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

Anthony Amante says he comes by his criminal ways honestly.

His late father, Carmen, was a drug kingpin who went to prison for trafficking in cocaine. Tony followed in his dad’s footsteps.

Amante, 23, was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison for drug trafficking, running an illegal gambling ring, proceeds of crime offences and driving without a licence. With time already served, he was sentenced to another 5 years and 8½ months behind bars.

Amante also has to pay more than $43,000 in lieu of a Corvette and a Ford F-150 pickup truck federal drug prosecutors wanted seized as proceeds of crime. If Amante doesn’t pay up within three months, another 15 months will be tacked onto his prison sentence.

Amante, who appeared in court wearing a black Adidas track suit, winking and smiling at his girlfriend, was arrested in March 2014. Police had been investigating him since September 2012, tapping his phone and following him to Toronto where he and an accomplice picked up nearly one kilogram of cocaine in December of that year. While travelling between Toronto and Windsor, Amante was on the phone arranging a meeting where the cocaine would be distributed to his associates for sale. The coke was worth $99,650 on the street.

Police raided the driver’s Highland Avenue home and found a suitcase full of marijuana — 1.5 kilograms’ worth — in a basement closet. They also found a scale and debt list.

In February 2014, they raided the Francois Avenue home of Kyle Greening, Amante’s pot salesman. In Greening’s home, police found 3.5 kilograms of marijuana, a Springfield Armory handgun and six rounds of 9mm ammunition for a Luger.

Greening pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, conspiracy to traffic in marijuana and firearm charges. He is to be sentenced later this month.

Amante’s girlfriend, Brooke Doyle, was arrested at her London home, but the charges against her were eventually dropped. She told police that she and Amante had been dating for a year, living together on and off. Amante made her mortgage and car payments, but Doyle claimed ignorance about how her boyfriend got his money, saying he does not have a job.

Amante, who has been to jail for dealing pot in the past, admitted he sold drugs because it was the only business he knew. His father, believed to be distributing drugs in the Windsor area for the Hells Angels, was sentenced in 2006 to three years in prison.

Amante’s father died of a heart attack in January 2013 at the age of 46. Amante took over his father’s now-defunct restaurant on Lesperance Road in Tecumseh, La Cucina.

Amante also began dealing drugs, just like his father had.

Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean called Amante “the directing mind behind the operation to bring drugs to Windsor for distribution.”

Dean said both the type of drugs and the amount Amante dealt were aggravating factors in the case. “The harm done by cocaine… is well known. It destroys the lives of those addicted to it.”

Amante’s lawyer, Dan Scott, had asked for a sentence of two to three years. Federal drug prosecutor Zuzana Szasz said Amante should spent eight to 10 years behind bars.

Dean said, if taken individually, the charges to which Amante pleaded guilty would attract a penitentiary term of 13½ years. But calling Amante a “still youthful adult offender,” Dean said he gave Amante the shortest possible sentence given his chances for rehabilitation.

Even in the unlikely event that Amante is denied parole and serves his sentence in its entirety, he will still be younger than 30 when he is released from prison, the judge said. “It leaves you plenty of time to change your life around.”

Amante is to pay $1,300 in fines that go into a fund to help victims of crime and forfeited jewelry police say was bought with drug money.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or on Twitter @WinStarSacheli

Despite its parent company filing for bankruptcy protection in the United States Thursday, it will be “business as usual” at Caesars Windsor, the casino insists.

“There are no ramifications for us,” Jhoan Baluyot, Caesars Windsor spokeswoman, said Thursday after the operating unit of the casino giant filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Chicago. Junior shareholders are opposing the bankruptcy plan which would see them get less than 10 cents on the dollar, and are trying to have the bankruptcy proceed in friendlier Delaware, instead.

Rumours of the impending bankruptcy have been swirling for months. In October, the company said it was in discussions with banks and other lenders to scale down its debt.

According to the plan filed in bankruptcy court Thursday, the company plans to cuts its $18.6-billion debt by nearly $10 billion.

Unlike the company’s 44 other casinos, Caesars Windsor is managed by the casino company, not owned by it. The casino, including the table games and slot machines, is owned by the provincial government, through the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.

“OLG continues to monitor the situation with Caesars Entertainment Corporation closely,” spokesman Tony Bitonti said Thursday. “OLG will maintain its obligations to the people of Ontario and ensure that our interests are protected.”

According to news reports, the bankruptcy plan involves splitting the company into a casino company and a real estate investment trust. The company says it will not close any casinos.

Last year, Caesars closed two casinos in Atlantic City and Mississippi and sold a hotel tower and country club in Atlantic City.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com and Twitter@WinStarSacheli

More than four dozen charges were stayed this week against two people arrested during a raid at a Lauzon Road home in 2012.

Tina Vachon, 31, and Michael Loiselle, 37, had just begun what was to be a three-week trial in Superior Court. The Crown stayed all the charges against them after the defence launched a Charter challenge arguing the pair’s rights had been violated.

“There were Constitutional issues related to the search warrant,” said defence lawyer Evan Weber. At issue, he explained, was the information police used to convince a judge to issue a warrant to search the residence.

Windsor police found eight guns – some of them loaded – and ammunition during the Dec. 4, 2012 raid. The raid was on a home in the 2500 block of Lauzon Road.

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When a Brampton trucker loaded box after box of dried poppy heads into the back of his big rig, little did he know he would have the dubious honour of blazing a trail through Windsor’s court system.

Anoop Kumar Ubbu, 35, was sentenced Friday to 20 months in jail after being caught smuggling 432 kilograms of doda worth $864,000 over the Ambassador Bridge. Until Ubbu was caught in June 2010, the drug had never before been intercepted by border guards here.

Ubbu, who lives in a two-bedroom basement apartment with his wife and three children, told the court he was forced to smuggle the illegal drug by three men to whom he owed a massive gambling debt.

Two of the men – Bryan Wong and Sharanjeet Gill – were charged with conspiring to import the drug, but were acquitted after trial in September.

The third man – Javier Kang – is believed to have fled the country and is wanted on an arrest warrant after not showing up for trial.

“He is the only one being punished,” Ubbu’s lawyer, Andrew Bradie, told the court Friday.

Ubbu had travelled to Minnesota to pick up a shipment of home improvement goods destined for Hamilton. On the return leg, he stopped in Taylor, Mich., where he and two other men loaded 96 boxes of poppy heads into the back of his truck.

Police from both sides of the border watched the rendezvous.

In court Friday, Ubbu pleaded for leniency, asking for a sentence of house arrest. “I should be given another chance and should be forgiven,” he told the court through a Punjabi interpreter.

“Forgiveness is something you get elsewhere, not here,” Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas replied.

Thomas said the quantity and type of drug involved called for a stricter sentence.

“For me to give Mr. Ubbu a conditional sentence… does not send an appropriate message to the community.”

Doda is made by crushing poppy heads into a powder which is eaten or steeped to make tea. Until drug investigators began cracking down on the drug, it was sold openly in East Indian markets in Canada as a spice.

But experts who have testified in other doda trials say the drug is highly addictive. Like heroin and other opiates, methadone is used to break doda dependency.

In 2013, a senior who brought a kilogram of the drug over the Ambassador Bridge, was sentenced to six months on house arrest. Court heard Gurdareshan Singh was a habitual doda user and that the stash he had in his car was for his personal use.

Singh, 65 at the time, was the first man to be sentenced locally for importing the drug.

A trucker accused of smuggling doda into Canada in 2011 has avoided prosecution by apparently fleeing the county. Satwinder Jeet Singh Kehra did not show up trial and is wanted on an arrest warrant.

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A physician stripped of his medical licence was back before the courts Monday, this time claiming he is the victim of a smear campaign by a former patient and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Dr. Charles Nicholas Rathe, 51, is on trial charged with public mischief for filing a fraud complaint that police later determined was bogus. Rathe, who goes by the name Nick, went to the OPP in 2006 claiming that a former patient whom he had hired as an officer worker had stolen his ID and forged his signature on her car lease.

Rathe, who admits he has struggled with drug addiction, is no stranger to the courts. After the College of Physicians and Surgeons suspended his licence in 2006, Rathe went to court to appeal, but lost.

In December 2007, he was convicted of assault for punching a woman in the face during a road rage incident. That criminal conviction, among other conduct it called “unbecoming a physician,” spurred the college in 2012 to revoke Rathe’s medical licence.

The woman Rathe accused of defrauding him was also at the centre of Rathe’s last disciplinary hearing that resulted in the permanent loss of his medical licence, court heard Tuesday. The woman said she had had a sexual relationship with Rathe.

Rathe told police the woman concocted the story after he “fired her” both as a patient and an office worker upon hearing that she had been selling her prescriptions at a downtown strip club where she also worked.

Rathe said he never went to police with the allegation because he had heard it “third hand.”

OPP Sgt. Rick Gorchinsky testified Monday that Rathe came to him August 2007 with a mutual friend who was a retired police officer. Gorchinsky said, as a sergeant, he wouldn’t normally do such intake work, but did as a favour to his friend.

Gorchinsky said he passed the case onto the detectives squad where the case was assigned to Det.-Const. Ben Metcalfe.

Metcalfe testified he contacted Rathe to give a videotaped statement on Oct. 30, 2007. Rathe told him about the allegations he faced at the college and showed up with reports from handwriting analysts and the name of a private investigator to “clear his name.”

After speaking to the private investigator himself, Metcalfe said he began to question Rathe’s story.

Rathe told Metcalfe the woman who had defrauded him had her boyfriend use the doctor’s ID to pose as him at a local Hyundai dealership where she leased a $14,000 Tiburon. Rathe said the boyfriend looked like him.

Metcalfe said he learned the two looked nothing alike. He put Rathe’s picture into a photo lineup that was shown to the dealership worker who handled the lease. That worker identified Rathe as the man who had accompanied the woman and signed the lease documents, court heard.

Rathe had also been charged with fraud in relation to that same lease, but assistant Crown attorney George Spartinos advised the court Monday at the start of trial that he would not be pursing the charge.

Rathe is representing himself at trial. The Crown is not seeking a jail sentence.

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Former medical doctor Charles Nicholas Rathe accused an OPP officer of bias Tuesday, claiming the cop did not do a thorough investigation into his 2007 fraud complaint.

“What was all the evidence you used to formulate your opinion as to my guilt,” Rathe asked Const. Ben Metcalfe. It was one of many questions Superior Court Justice Christopher Bondy advised Rathe was inappropriate to put to the witness.

Rathe, 51, is representing himself at trial where he is charged with public mischief for allegedly filing a bogus complaint with police. Rathe went to police with the allegation that a patient he had hired to work in his now-defunct family practice stole his ID and forged his signature on a car lease.

The patient was also a complainant in an investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the regulatory body for medical doctors in the province. The College found Rathe had a sexual relationship with the woman during which he wrote her prescriptions for opiates. Rathe was stripped of his licence to practise medicine in 2012.

Metcalfe testified he communicated with the college’s investigator. When he learned Rathe did not dispute what the college’s investigation uncovered, including that he had co-signed the car lease for the woman, he stopped looking into Rathe’s complaint.

“We had the icing on the cake,” Metcalfe said.

Rathe, who has battled drug addiction, is no stranger to the justice system. In 2007 he was convicted of assault for punching a woman in the face during a road rage incident.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons, the regulatory body for medical doctors in the province, had previously suspended his licence in 2006.

In his current trial, Rathe said his lawyer and the college drafted a statement that was used in the disciplinary hearing against him. Rathe said, while he agreed to the statement, he did not sign it. He argues it should not be used against him at trial.

The trial is scheduled to last all week.

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DETROIT

An American trucker who took a wrong turn onto the Ambassador Bridge ended up behind bars for possession of firearms.

The 58-year-old Florida man unwittingly ended up on the Canadian side of the bridge Jan. 17. The Canadian Border Service Agency escorted the man back to the United States after he declared a .45-calibre handgun, a 12-guage shotgun and .38-calibre revolver.

At U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a computer check revealed the man had a criminal record that included convictions for carrying concealed weapons and drug possession. As a felon, he was prohibited from possessing firearms.

The man and his guns are now in the custody of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“Our co-operation with CBSA is vital in taking prohibited and illegal weapons off the streets of our communities,” Detroit port director Roderick Blanchard said Wednesday in announcing the arrest. “Teamwork such as this leads to positive outcomes for everyone.”

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Dr. Nick Rathe got a patient hooked on Oxycontin then began to sleep with her, giving her money for daycare and a car, the woman testified Thursday.

Michelle Timothy told Rathe’s public mischief trial that she was the former Belle River doctor’s mistress for about a year. It was during their affair that Rathe accompanied her to Windsor Hyundai in January 2006, to co-sign a car loan, Timothy testified.

Rathe, 51, is accused of filing a bogus police report alleging Timothy forged his name on the loan documents.

Michelle Timothy leaves the Superior Court of Justice in Windsor on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star) (

He told police Timothy had stolen his driver’s licence and financial information and had another man impersonate him at the dealership.

At the time Rathe went to police, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario was investigating a complaint against him by Timothy. Rathe in 2012 lost his licence to practise medicine.

Timothy, 30, told the court Rathe supported her getting a new car. “I was driving a really old car. I needed it to go back and forth between school,” she testified.

When Timothy settled on a Tiburon, Rathe accompanied her to the dealership to co-sign the loan. Because the car was to be in her name, Timothy needed documentation showing she had a job, she said. Rathe wrote a note on a prescription pad that she was his employee, she said, identifying a note entered as a court exhibit at trial.

Windsor Hyundai’s former financial manager testified Thursday that he remembered Timothy and Rathe coming in together and signing the loan documents. “I don’t forget a face,” Lorenz Brochert testified.

Brochert later picked Rathe out of a photo lineup when OPP investigators were trying to determine the identity of the man who signed the loan documents.

Under cross-examination by Rathe, who is representing himself at trial, Brochert said, “It’s not everyday that a man your age comes in with a girl to co-sign a loan.”

Brochert said, from the way Timothy spoke to Rathe, it was clear they were in a relationship – “I hate to say it, but a Girl Friday situation… someone on the side.”

Timothy said she set up a bank account at the TD branch on Ottawa Street and Rathe would give her cash each month to deposit to cover the car payments.

Once, Rathe wrote her a cheque to pay for daycare and books, she testified. Under cross-examination, she was unclear on the amount.

“He didn’t want to take out too much at once because he didn’t want his wife to notice.”

Suddenly the money stopped. So did the prescriptions for Oxy, Timothy said.

“He stopped seeing me.”

Timothy said she is “absolutely” sure Rathe knew she was addicted to the drug he had first prescribed her for a sore back.

Without it, she went into withdrawal.

“They were my whole life,” she said of the pills. “I became really addicted to them. I got really sick. I became dependent on them.”

Timothy admitted to blackmailing Rathe, sending him letters in which she threatened to tell his wife about their affair and going after his medical licence.

She did both.

“I just snapped I guess.”

Timothy said she got rid of the car after finding a baggie of cocaine in the gas tank. She said someone had set her up, stashing the drugs then reporting her as a drug dealer to police. She said she was never charged because she called police herself upon finding the drugs.

Rathe, in a rambling opening statement to the judge at the beginning of trial on Monday, said he had hired Timothy to work in his office. He said he fired her because she was unreliable.

He also stopped seeing her as a patient when he heard “third-hand” that she had been selling the prescriptions he gave to her.

Timothy testified with words flying out of her mouth like machine-gun fire. She fidgeted in her seat, her face a flurry of sniffles and tics.

When Brochert, the now-retired car dealer, took the stand, he was serene by comparison.

Rathe accused Brochert of being motivated to lie because he didn’t want to admit someone like Timothy had so easily defrauded him. “That’s why you’re against me,” Rathe said.

Brochert replied calmly. “I have no agenda here, sir… It was you in my office. It was you who signed the deal.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com or on Twitter @WinStarSacheli