Biographical Summary

Charles Imre Michael-John Lugosi was born in Brantford Ontario Canada and attended North Park Collegiate and Vocational School where he completed 4 years of high school in 3 and graduated as an Ontario Scholar. He attended the University of Western Ontario, where he completed two years of Social Science studies towards his Honors Bachelor of Arts degree, and was named to the Dean’s Honor List for both years. Dr. Lugosi was then admitted to law school at Western at the age of 20, one of the youngest in his class.

After graduating, Dr. Lugosi articled in downtown Toronto with Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie, Canada’s leading management labor law firm. Following his admission to the Ontario Bar on April 9, 1981 Dr. Lugosi moved to Vancouver British Columbia and articled with the firm of Russell & DuMoulin (now Fasken) and was admitted to the BC Bar on May 11, 1982. After he survived a life-threatening illness in 1983, Dr. Lugosi opened in 1984 his own law firm in Victoria BC, where he first worked as a junior Crown counsel, then as a residential tenancy arbitrator and as a general litigation counsel in private practice, until he left his growing five person firm in 1988 to study theology at Regent College in Vancouver.

After interning in American constitutional law focusing on the First Amendment with the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville Virginia in 1990, Dr. Lugosi moved to Prince George, BC where he achieved province wide success as a criminal defense lawyer and as a general litigation counsel. From 1990-2000, Dr. Lugosi achieved acquittals (6), reduced verdicts (11), new trials (2), stays (5) out of 27 homicide cases he defended (88.8% success rate). Dr. Lugosi became a prominent criminal lawyer throughout British Columbia and achieved a national reputation as an appellate attorney, when he won the Feeney case in the Supreme Court of Canada. That case resulted in a new law barring police entry into private dwellings without a search warrant.

As well, in the area of medical malpractice, Dr. Lugosi formed a team with former BC Justice and former provincial NDP leader, Tom Berger, and together after over several years of work, they achieved a record infant settlement on behalf of Ximena Renaerts, who survived an attempted abortion and suffered brain damage when she was abandoned by medical staff at the Vancouver General Hospital and left to die.

In 2000, Dr. Lugosi closed his law office in British Columbia to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he earned a Master of Law (2001), a Master of Bioethics (2002), and completed his Doctor of Juridical Science (2005), the highest degree in law awarded by U Penn, while working as a law professor in Florida. Dr. Lugosi was the recipient of the Potts Scholarship during the time he was working on his dissertation. Dr. Lugosi completed his bioethics clinical internship, in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, at the famous Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Lugosi also worked for one of Philadelphia’s best criminal appellate attorneys, white-collar crime specialist, Peter Goldberger.

Dr. Lugosi first began teaching law students at Western in London, Ontario and then over the next eight years, at various law schools in Florida, Michigan and Tennessee. Dr. Lugosi has taught: criminal law; criminal procedure; constitutional law; the rule of law (in the context of international terrorism and democratic societies); jurisprudence (legal philosophy); property law (including land disputes, environmental law, and real estate); tort law (including negligence, libel, slander, nuisance, trespass); healthcare law; and bioethics to law students, and business organizations and ethics to undergraduate students at Laurier Brantford.

Dr. Lugosi was awarded in 2006 an Academic Fellowship by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, requiring travel to Israel to attend lectures, visit classified facilities, and learned from top academics, diplomats, military officers, and intelligence agents.

In a span of 5 years, Dr. Lugosi published 14 scholarly articles in law reviews, at first tier law schools, including those at Stanford, Georgetown, St. Louis, Temple and Texas. His doctoral dissertation was published in a special edition of Issues in Law & Medicine. Topics of articles include: abortion; the 14th Amendment; euthanasia; separating conjoined twins, habeas corpus, legal history, enemy combatants, religious freedom, freedom of speech, corporate personhood, natural justice, exonerating the factually innocent, and the rule of law.

While a visiting associate professor of law in Ann Arbor Michigan, Dr. Lugosi organized a team of students and lawyers to help him represent Julie Baumer, who was wrongfully convicted of first-degree child abuse, and was serving time in jail after losing all her appeals. At the hearing before the original trial judge, Dr. Lugosi introduced conclusive forensic medical evidence from New Zealand, California and Washington State by Skype (a first for the State of Michigan) that proved the victim suffered a stroke from natural causes and that his client was factually innocent of child abuse. At the new trial, University of Michigan law students from the Innocence Clinic played the roles of Dr. Lugosi and his expert witnesses, by reading in the transcripts, as Dr. Lugosi moved away to teach law in Tennessee. The jury acquitted Julie Baumer of all charges. The New York Times, 60 Minutes and PBS all reported on her historic struggle to be exonerated.

Dr. Lugosi’s unique credentials authorize him to practice in both the United States and Canada: Admitted to the Law Society of Upper Canada (Ontario) April 9, 1981; Admitted to the Law Society of British Columbia, May 11, 1982; Admitted to Michigan State Bar, May 7, 2007; Admitted to United States District Court, Eastern District Michigan, June 25, 2007; United States District Court, Western District Michigan, August 20, 2009; United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, August 20, 2009; Supreme Court of the United States, October 4, 2010; United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, February 6, 2012; and Washington State Bar, September 23, 2013.

Dr. Lugosi researched and drafted the winning arguments in three amicus briefs filed in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) by The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization. Dr. Lugosi’s arguments were adopted by SCOTUS in Florida v. Joelis Jardines, Florida v. Harris and Kim Millbrook v. United States of America.

As an associate partner at the Windsor Ontario law firm of Sutts Strosberg, LLP, from 2006-2007, Dr. Lugosi created the winning arguments in a novel claim in Driskell v. Dangerfield, to establish civil liability of prosecutors and police for negligence. Dr. Lugosi gained experience in multi-million dollar class actions and various tort claims involving commercial litigation, e-commerce, and defamation law.

Since July 1, 2012, Dr. Lugosi has represented clients from his base in Brantford, Ontario as a litigation lawyer, in the areas of constitutional law, tort law, commercial litigation, tax litigation, labor law, family law and criminal law. Recently, Dr. Lugosi led a court battle in Toronto to declare unconstitutional the power of Parliament to decide who is and who is not a human being. He was the lead defense lawyer in a high profile case that defeated a multi-million dollar class action that was intended to suppress dissenters who exercised their freedom of speech, expressing opposing viewpoints at a major public political event, and helped a former airline employee in his struggle to make seniority rights protected under the Charter of Rights.

Dr. Lugosi has given presentations and lectures at numerous international law conferences and public events, and appeared as a guest on Canadian national television programs hosted by Ezra Levant and David Mainse, where he was interviewed about his legal work.

Before he left Victoria in 1988, Dr. Lugosi was very active in the local community. He was: the co-founder and provider of free general legal advice to the poor on a bi-weekly basis from 1983 – 1988 at the James Bay Community Centre, Victoria, B.C.; the volunteer legal counsel to a non-smokers rights society, Airspace, in Victoria from 1983 – 1988; the co-founder and volunteer legal counsel to Students Against Drunk Driving, Victoria 1986 – 1988; the initiator and volunteer duty counsel for Sunday morning legal services in Victoria for detained indigent persons from 1984-1988; an unpaid director of the Canadian-Hungarian Society of Vancouver Island, from 1987 – 1989; an unpaid director, of the B.C. Triathlon Association, 1986; the creator, organizer and chair, of the first Conference for Parents and Teens on Drug and Alcohol Abuse, at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., in 1986; and a volunteer counselor, visiting hospital cancer patients, from 1985-1988.

Today Dr. Lugosi is an avid golfer and devoted to raising his five young children. He enjoys the outdoors and coaches basketball. He is a student of genealogy and enjoys traveling.

Note: Past performance is not indicative of future results.