Canada's Eric Lamaze rides Candar Mail during the National at Spruce Meadows in Calgary, on June 7, 2019.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
The Olympic champion showjumper Eric Lamaze submitted forged medical documents in an attempt to have a long-running lawsuit against him suspended, according to an Ontario Superior Court judge, pleading with the court that he was too ill with brain cancer to participate.
In an order issued this week, Justice Marvin Kurz ruled that the celebrated equestrian, who won gold and silver for Canada at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and bronze in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, had engaged in “egregious behaviour” that threatened the integrity of the court when he gave his lawyer three letters attesting to the dire state of his health that had purportedly come from a leading Brussels cancer centre.
Mr. Lamaze announced in May, 2019, that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer in late 2017.
Over this summer, he began using that illness as a justification to have a breach-of-contract lawsuit adjourned, telling the court that the cancer had spread to his throat and that surgery he was set to undergo, in addition to cognitive impairment, would significantly hamper his legal team’s preparations.
One of the letters he presented as proof of his illness was written in Dutch by a neurosurgeon who the court was later informed did not speak the language. That letter included references to Mr. Lamaze’s “ruined” reputation and questionable financial resources, which Justice Kurz found to be “incongruous” matters for a neurosurgeon to be discussing.
Another document states that Mr. Lamaze had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an especially aggressive form of brain cancer. It was on the letterhead of the Chirec Cancer Institute, but it did not bear the name of a specific physician. A third letter contained language echoing the unsigned document, with inconsistencies and odd address spellings that raised the judge’s suspicions.
The letters were proved to be fraudulent after a Belgian private detective hired by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit paid a visit to the Chirec Cancer Institute and spoke with staff there. The legal department quoted a physician whom Mr. Lamaze had represented as one of his doctors, saying, “I never wrote this letter and moreover I have no memory of such a patient.”
After the fraud was presented in court, Mr. Lamaze’s lawyer asked to be removed from the case, telling The Globe and Mail he was “blindsided” by the episode and that he is no longer even certain his client is ill with glioblastoma.
“I have believed since November of 2017, like the rest of the world, that Eric was diagnosed with cancer,” said Tim Danson, who has been Mr. Lamaze’s friend and lawyer for almost three decades. “And there would be no reason for me to certainly not accept what he has stated to me and what he stated publicly – he’s given interviews, right? So I’ve always believed it, until – as I said to the judge in open court – that I was blindsided by this new information. So now I don’t know what the truth is.”
Prior to presenting the letters in court, Mr. Lamaze had not previously disclosed the type of cancer he says he has. Glioblastoma is an especially aggressive form of cancer. The U.S. National Institutes of Health says 8.3 per cent of patients over 40 years old survive up to two years after diagnosis.
Mr. Danson believes Mr. Lamaze does have an affliction that is affecting his decision-making. “Something is wrong. The Eric Lamaze that I’m dealing with is not the Eric Lamaze that I’ve dealt with in the past. And the real Eric Lamaze would never be involved in something like this, but I can’t ignore what has been presented.”
Mr. Lamaze did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
He announced his retirement from competition in March, 2022, but stayed on as chef d’équipe of the Canadian Showjumping Team. In January of this year, Equestrian Canada said he would be leaving the position at the end of that month.
The case Mr. Lamaze is seeking to delay stretches back to 2010, after the Florida-based stable he runs, Torrey Pines, sold three horses to Iron Horse Farm, a family-run operation in Caledon, Ont. Karina Aziz, the daughter of the farm’s owners, was showing promise in the sport of showjumping at the time and says Mr. Lamaze misrepresented the horses he sold them.
“He took major advantage of my family and our trust,” said Ms. Aziz, in an interview on Wednesday. After Mr. Lamaze announced his diagnosis, she says, her family considered dropping the case they had been pursuing for almost a decade by that point. “Everybody was painting him like a hero. But I thought that what happened to me was wrong, and I wanted to stay in pursuit of the truth.”
With the court’s declaration of Mr. Lamaze’s fraud, she says, “I think that people really need to know the truth of who everyone has been admiring the last 15 years.”
The Iron Horse case is not the only lawsuit Mr. Lamaze is currently facing. Earlier this year, Horse and Hound reported Jeffrey Brandmaier and his wife Lorna “Muffie” Guthrie are suing regarding two horses they paid to acquire and support for Mr. Lamaze to train. They allege they later found he had billed them more than one of the horses had cost to purchase. They allege that Mr. Lamaze later sold the other horse at a significant profit, none of which they received, as promised. They are suing for more than US$1.3-million.