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Good afternoon. Following are this week’s summaries of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of August 28, 2023.

I hope everyone is enjoying the last long weekend of the summer.

Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation v. Canada (Attorney General) is a 125-page decision dealing with the claim of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation to submerged lands in Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. The claim was mostly unsuccessful.

On June 27, 2022, Three Arrows Capital (“3AC”), a crypto hedge fund, commenced liquidation proceedings in the British Virgin Islands and thereafter filed recognition proceedings in, among other countries, the United States and Singapore.

On May 8, 2023, online cryptocurrency exchange platform Bittrex, Inc. and three of its affiliated entities (collectively “Bittrex”) filed for chapter 11 to wind down their U.S. and long-dormant Malta operations. The bankruptcy filing followed costly regulatory investigations and an April 17, 2023 SEC enforcement action alleging that Bittrex improperly sold crypto assets that were securities. Unlike other crypto bankruptcies, Bittrex did not risk, hypothecate, or loan cryptocurrencies needed to meet its contractual obligations to its customers.

Following are our summaries of the civil decisions of the Ontario Court of Appeal for the week of April 24, 2023.

Following are this week’s summaries of the civil decisions of Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of March 27 to 31, 2023. There were only two substantive decisions. One was a commercial leasing matter, and the other was a receivership matter.

Table of Contents

Civil Decisions

Jagtoo & Jagtoo, Professional Corporation v. Grandfield Homes Holdings Limited, 2023 ONCA 214

Last month, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts denied confirmation of a cannabis company employee’s Chapter 13 plan and dismissed his bankruptcy case. The employee, Scott H. Blumsack (the “Debtor”), is a general manager who is licensed in Massachusetts to work for Society Cannabis Co., a Massachusetts-licensed retailer, wholesaler, and producer of cannabis products.

When a court-appointed trustee or liquidator is tasked with liquidating an entity, they need to gain possession of all of the entity’s assets. In crypto cases, this task can prove difficult when trying to identify and control all of the entity’s different digital assets and obtain cooperation from the entity’s former operators. Unfortunately, in the case of Three Arrows Capital (“3AC”), the two founders have refused to cooperate with recovery efforts and have absconded to unknown foreign countries.

Online claims-trading platform Xclaim Inc. came under scrutiny this past summer in the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club Inc. bankruptcy case pending in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Since at least 2019, Xclaim has executed agreements with at least five notice and claims agent firms to synchronize their proofs of claim registers with Xclaim’s website where such claims are posted for sale.