Victims of former Calgary teacher plan to file new lawsuit, add name of another teacher

The ongoing case of a former Calgary teacher accused of sexual and physical assault now involves a second educator, the lawyers representing the victims said Monday.

The sixteen victims, once students of John Ware Junior High School, are alleged to have been abused by teacher Michael Gregory from 1988 to 2004.

He died by suicide days after being charged by police in February 2021.

Now, the group has proposed the filing of a new lawsuit against the Calgary Board of Education (CBE), the estate of Gregory, and former teacher Fred Archer.

Lawyers with HMC Law say the CBE has left them with no option but to proceed with formal litigation, after they cancelled several mediations with victims just six days before they were set to start.

“To be clear, CBE had provided us with nothing, not one piece of paper, not one statement — nothing,” said plaintiff representative David Corrigan. “Generally speaking, in a mediation, one party provides their information, the other party provides their information so that you can evaluate their respective cases.”

Tuesday will see a court application to discontinue the class action, and proceed with a mass tort action, lawyers say.

Litigators say this will hopefully prevent further delays, which Corrigan says is important.

“If it’s a mass tort, the people out there who might be thinking that they can sit on the sidelines and their case will fall under this class action idea, those people could’ve rested in confidence that that would occur. If we proceed as we hope to, and intend to proceed, those people who haven’t come forward, there’s no opportunity for them to receive compensation through that process,” he explained.

Prior to this announcement, Archer was being investigated for sexual assault allegations from former students at his previous school in Springbank, where he worked before his time at John Ware.