Prominent Winnipeg lawyer Greg Brodsky dies

Winnipeg lawyer Greg Brodsky passed away on Feb. 9, 2022. (Source: CTV News Winnipeg)

WINNIPEG -

The Canadian legal community has lost a giant. Winnipeg lawyer Greg Brodsky passed away on Wednesday.

Brodsky spent more than half a century practising law, defending dozens of high-profile clients including Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Thomas Sophonow and Andrea Giesbrecht.

The criminal defence lawyer was always busy. Brodsky litigated more than a thousand homicide cases in his career, a record in the English-speaking world.

"And the next one is like 450," said Matt Gould, a partner in Brodsky's law firm. "So more than double the next person in the English-speaking world, that's the best experience level."

Gould says Brodsky was passionately committed to practising law.

He says Brodsky lived and breathed the case he was working at the time, and then he would move on to the next one.

"That's part of how he accomplished what he did. How he completed so many cases."

Gould says Brodsky looms large in the Canadian criminal justice system.

"He's changed the way that the law thinks about major elements. He brought battered wife syndrome to the Supreme Court of Canada. He had an impact on how not criminally responsible how that's interpreted. He changed the way that the courts considered reasonable doubt. I mean those are core key elements of the justice system aspects that affect maybe almost every case when you're getting to reasonable doubt. I mean, the trickle down from his landmark cases is just astonishing."

Greg Brodsky was 81.