by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

They're shooting a movie about Montreal's former Supreme Court judge Louise Arbour, but I think Antonio Lamer's life would also make a real classy Montreal flick.

The retired Chief Justice pulled what seems an awesome career stunt, leaping from the puddle to the penthouse, morphing from the legal personification of some of the most unspeakable local criminals in Montreal's dirtiest years to becoming top judge in the land.

So how'd he do it? The astoundingly gracious Lamer, 71, recently allowed me to pester him and probe his riddle. I also secretly intended to scrounge some freebie legal tips about my parking tickets and my posse issues; my "entourage," as they now insist I call them, has been bugging me with crybaby demands. But I got sidetracked by his tale.

As a sprout from 3446 Iberville, Lamer caught trial fever from twice-weekly trips to the courthouse stomping grounds of his dad, the chief legal counsel for the Montreal police. In 1957 Lamer entered law. "Whoever walked in the door became my client," he says. "There was no legal aid back then and when the bâttonier would ask you to defend a person, not only did you not say no, but you paid for the transcripts of the coroner's inquest out of your pocket."

Such a request led the inexperienced 25-year-old to defend a waiter of the same age against the death penalty (a punishment he now rejects as "the ultimate obscenity") for shooting a bystander outside the Taverne des Copains in Pointe St-Charles. "The Dubois brothers had beaten up this tavern waiter named Miron and they were leaving in their convertible. So Miron's shooting at them and they're shooting back and Miron unfortunately kills a social worker walking by named Petit."

Lamer exploited a loophole to keep his client from another type of loop: the type that fits tightly around the neck. "Right after that, they amended the criminal code and introduced ‘transferred intent,' but I had already won. I got somebody off of the noose and he was sentenced to seven years in the pen for manslaughter. People started saying, ‘Well, maybe he's good.'"

Baddies soon sought out Lamer, who defended a lot of "motor manslaughter" cases and fought for nightclub owners on the Lower Main, a place he'd rarely trek, except when attending Liberal Party meetings at the Monument-National.

"The Lower Main was an awful place. You wouldn't go because of the shabby nightclubs and all, and there were shootings and all kinds of trouble there." Yet he defended the area's club owners, persuading the Supreme Court to strike down the "vicarious liability" rule that made club owners face jail for allowing minors to drink.

Throughout such episodes the folksy, quiet-spoken Lamer resisted the seductive lure of Montreal's underworld, a force that gobbled up many brilliant contemporaries. Some fellow attorneys like Sidney Leithman and Frank Shoofey even ended up murdered.

"I was never a Mob lawyer, I never fraternized with my clients and I never even went to a club to collect money for my fees. People came to my office."

Lamer never antagonized cops, even when they had beaten confessions out of his clients. "If an officer was to my knowledge perjuring himself, I'd ask for an adjournment and speak to his captain. I'd say, ‘He's a young constable, I don't want to ruin his career, so would you tear up that confession?' and he'd say, ‘Yep.' But if you were a devious counsel, they'd play dirty too."

Lamer walked away from Montreal's miscreants in 1969 to become a judge. "There came a time when I started judging my clients, which is a bad thing for a lawyer. You defend your client, you don't judge."

He joined the Supreme Court in 1980 and became top justice from 1990 to 2000, writing much of the legal script that reaffirms the socially liberal values so many Canuckistanis embrace.

Not everybody can become top dog in Canada's legal kennel but Lamer's story proves that it's not impossible to get to where you really want to be, no matter where you start.

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