An attorney for the Torys law firm calls it an "inadvertent omission.” Counsel for a lawyer disciplinary authority calls it "a massive foul-up," reports the Toronto Star.

But regardless of how the situation is described, the well-known Toronto firm's failure to timely produce 168 boxes of documents and 11 discs will delay for at least a week a legal ethics hearing expected to last several months concerning an alleged conflict of interest that came to light during the uproar over Conrad Black's dealings with Hollinger International Inc.

Two Torys solicitors, Beth DeMerchant, who has since retired, and partner Darren Sukonick of Toronto, are accused of representing parties with "not aligned" interests during the 2000 sale of Hollinger-owned newspapers to CanWest Global Communications, the newspaper recounts. The firm reportedly had solicitor-client relationships with both Hollinger companies and Hollinger executives who were given so-called noncompete payments.

Documents were requested by the Law Society of Upper Canada as early as 2006. But it wasn't until lawyers representing DeMerchant and Sukonick started investigating that the firm apparently realized additional material, above and beyond the 100 discs it had provided to the law society by 2007, had not yet been disclosed.