Faced with warring ex-spouses besieging one another with threats and verbal abuse and dragging their children into it too, Ontario Superior Judge Joseph Quinn resorted to the only tool he had left – a highly unusual verbal roasting.
“Paging Dr. Freud, paging Dr. Freud,” Judge Quinn began a recent judgment that has gone viral in the family-law community. “Here, a husband and wife have been marinating in a mutual hatred so intense as to surely amount to a personality disorder requiring treatment. The source of difficulties is hatred: a hardened, harmful, high-octane hatred.”
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And he anticipates criticism of his tone: “The parties repeatedly have shown they are immune to reason. Consequently, in my decision, I have tried ridicule as a last resort.”
In a novel twist, Judge Quinn granted the wife, Catherine, sole custody of the feuding couple’s 13-year-old daughter. However, he ordered Larry to pay Catherine just a dollar a month in spousal support.
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Alternating caustic gibes with amusing observations, Judge Quinn portrayed Catherine – a 36-year-old school caretaker – and Larry, a labourer, as vile, foul-mouthed creatures who had burned through an enormous amount of police and court time waging their futile blitzkrieg.
He said that they cannot attend their son’s ball hockey games without erupting into loud conflict, and that Catherine once tried to run over Larry with a van. “This is always a telltale sign that a husband and wife are drifting apart,” Judge Quinn remarked dryly.
On three occasions, a niece of Catherine’s who is engaged to a Hells Angels biker called Larry to warn him that he would be shot dead, Judge Quinn said. “On Oct. 18, 2007, a nautical theme was added,” he remarked. “According to Larry, ‘Catherine’s sister-in-law yelled out her window that I was going to be floating in the canal dead.’”
Judge Quinn said that Larry, 38, possesses “a near-empty parenting tool box,” and was fond of venting his anger by sending Catherine insulting text messages and giving her ‘the finger’ as he drove by her home. “A finger is worth a thousand words and therefore, is particularly useful should one have a vocabulary of less than a thousand words,” Judge Quinn added.
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He said that Catherine also warned the children several times that if they attempted to telephone their father, they would go to jail. She also once text messaged her daughter while she was on an access visit with Larry to ask: “Is dickhead there?”
Judge Quinn said that he foolishly called a four-month hiatus during the trial in the hope that Larry and Catherine could benefit from mediation. “It is touching how a trial judge can retain his naivety even after 15 years on the bench,” he said.
