News & Events News Ontario government facing lawsuits from inmates over ‘unconscionable conduct’ by Maplehurst jail guards

Ontario government facing lawsuits from inmates over ‘unconscionable conduct’ by Maplehurst jail guards

June 16, 2025

The Toronto Star reports on a proposed class action Goldblatt Partners LLP and Posner Craig Stein LLP have commenced against the Government of Ontario seeking $30 million in damages caused by the unlawful conduct and wrongful acts carried out by prison authorities against inmates at Maplehurst Correctional Complex (“Maplehurst”) on December 22 to 24, 2023.

The lawsuit alleges that on December 22 to 24, 2023, at the direction and behest of Maplehurst’s Superintendent and other management staff, the Institutional Crisis Intervention Team carried out a coordinated operation targeting all of the approximately 192 inmates in Unit 8 of the institution. The coordinated operation was collective reprisal and collective punishment for an assault by an inmate on a guard on December 20, 2023.

The class action alleges that the coordinated operation included unlawful cell-by-cell strip searches of the entire unit, systematic assaults, wrenching the wrists of the inmates using zip ties, pepper-spraying and beating inmates inside their cells, and other rights deprivations. The living conditions within Unit 8 were also made inhospitable. Inmates were deprived of clothing, bedding, toilet paper, medical treatment and other necessities for upwards of two days. The temperature on Unit 8 was lowered to extreme cold levels by turning on the exhaust fans allowing in the outdoor winter air, while inmates were deprived of clothes in their cells.

The Toronto Star spoke to Louis Century about the proposed class action:

“What happened to the inmates on Unit 8 at Maplehurst should never happen in Canada,” said Louis Century, of Goldblatt Partners, one of three lawyers working on the proposed class action. “The state wielded its tremendous power to systematically assault and collectively punish a group of human beings for something they did not do.”

Geetha Philipupillai, also of Goldblatt Partners, and defence lawyer Gabriel Gross-Stein are also representing lead plaintiff Jamarey Chisholm, who, like more than 80 per cent of inmates in provincial jails, was awaiting trial and had not been convicted at the time of the incident.

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The Star published some surveillance camera footage of the incident earlier this year after it was made an exhibit in a criminal case. A judge said the video shows Maplehurst staff “breaking the law by abusing the very prisoners they have a duty of care to protect.”

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The incident has already compromised more than 30 criminal prosecutions across the province, according to a recent Star analysis, as inmates seek to have their charges stayed or sentences reduced because the jail violated their Charter rights.

Additional restitution is necessary, Gross-Stein argued, not only to compensate the inmates allegedly abused by the state, but also to deter future abuses.

“This type of extreme state misconduct can only occur where an institution believes itself to be immune from consequences,” he said, adding that a class action is a way to “counter impunity at Maplehurst and create meaningful accountability.”

Find out more about the class action here.

Read the Toronto Star article here.