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CCCA_V6No1_CrisisCommunication-FIN_CCCA_V6No1_CrisisCommunication 2/13/12 10:44 PM Page 36 Feature One organization that takes this message to heart is the University of British Columbia (UBC).The university’s lawyers act as spokespeople only on the rare occasions when it’s absolutely warranted. “We work very closely with our public affairs group,” says Hubert Lai, UBC’s university counsel and a member of its executive team in Vancouver.“We’ll sit down as a team and we’ll figure out what our position is, what messages we want to commu- nicate, what messages we’re afraid of, what the other side is going to come up with, and develop responses to those positions if they are raised. We’re very much part of a team, but we try to stay behind the scenes.” The legal team had to be front and centre during the case of Maughan v. UBC et al., a lawsuit filed against the university and four UBC professors on Oct. 23, 2002. The lawsuit was launched by former UBC graduate stu- dent and Anglican Christian Cynthia Maughan, who claimed that the defendants had promoted hatred or con- tempt of her and/or had promoted her inferiority as a Christian contrary to the B.C. Civil Rights Protection Act. Maughan also claimed $30-million in damages. On April 29,2010,the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) ruled that it would not interfere with the British Columbia Supreme Court’s finding (confirmed by the Court of Appeal) that there was no evidence to substantiate any of Maughan’s causes of action against any of the defendants. The team at UBC took significant care in preparing the pleadings;rather than just rejecting the claims outright,the team decided to tell a story in its statement of defence, Lai says:“We knew it would be the first place that the media would go, and we took great care in crafting the story so that anyone reading it did not have to refer to Maughan’s [statement of claim].We decided to keep it simple for the public,so that they could understand our side of the story.” UBC realized that universities are often portrayed in the media as bastions of left-leaning liberalism in which reli- gion in general, and Christianity in particular, are held in disdain.After reading Maughan’s statement,UBC identified the potential of a backlash against the university. Its approach was to provide colour,not just a denial of her alle- gations, Lai says:“The public is always looking for a human interest story,so it was important for the university to pres- ent a human face,that these were serious allegations against the personal integrity of almost half a dozen professors who Hubert Lai ROBERT KARPA, VENTURI + KARPA dedicate their lives to teaching young people, and that University counsel [Maughan] was asking for tens of millions of dollars.” University of British Columbia Since the court battle lasted almost eight years, it was Vancouver 36 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association SPRING 2012