Judge rebuked for 'mocking' comments in family court

Appeal court overturns ruling that denied woman right to take child abroad, citing flawed reasoning

- BETSY POWELL

The Court of Appeal for Ontario cited several passages contained in Justice R. Lee Akazaki's written reasons that appear to show he approached the case with "a level of disdain" for the mother.

Ontario’s highest court has reversed a trial judge’s decision that denied a mother the right to take her child to Ireland, citing significant legal errors and criticizing the recently appointed judge’s “mocking and inflammatory” tone and “entirely inappropriate” reasoning.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario cited several passages contained in Toronto Superior Court Justice R. Lee Akazaki’s written reasons that appear to show he approached the case with “a level of disdain” for the mother.

Akazaki’s reasons contained “material errors, serious misapprehension of the evidence and errors of law. He misconstrued and ignored relevant evidence. He also relied on extraneous considerations that were not before him,” Justice Steve Coroza wrote on behalf of a threejudge panel in a decision released last week.

Akazaki — who once served as the president of the Ontario Bar Association — was called to the bench by the federal government in late 2022 after a long career as a civil litigator, based out of downtown Toronto.

According to the appeal decision, the mother was born in Ireland and met her future husband, who was from India, in Cambridge, England. They married in Malta in 2014 and moved to Toronto for the father’s work. (The Star is not identifying the family.) The relationship was tumultuous, including the mother’s allegations of controlling and abusive behaviour by the father — which he denied.