A measure that places a Receiver in charge of Harrisburg’s finances is expected to be approved by the Senate on October 17, despite the recent move by City Council to file for bankruptcy.

“From our point of view nothing has changed,” said State Rep. Glen Grell, R-Cumberland, who worked on the Receiver legislation with State Senator Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin. “The bankruptcy move is specifically forbidden under legislation we passed in June. I don’t think there’s any doubt it will be challenged and pretty quickly dismissed.”

Borders has long collected personal information from customers and promised that such information would not be disclosed without consent. In light of that and Borders' current bankruptcy proceedings, the FTC has sent a letter to the consumer privacy ombudsman overseeing the Borders bankruptcy that seeks the protection of customer personal information.

Two recent opinions from separate federal courts of appeal upheld the dismissal of lawsuits by sophisticated investors that suffered losses in the auction rate securities ("ARS") market against the securities broker-dealers that allegedly fraudulently induced the purchase of the ARS.1

Section 11.01 of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (the “CCAA”) states that no order under Section 11 or 11.02 of the CCAA has the effect of: (a) prohibiting a person from requiring immediate payment for goods, services, the use of leased or licensed property or other valuable consideration provided after the order is made; or (b) requiring the further advance of money or credit.

As most are aware by now, the Ontario Court of Appeal (the “OCA”) recently caused alarm by finding that claims of pension plan beneficiaries ranked higher than the super-priority debtor-in-possession financing charge (the “DIP Charge”) created by the amended initial order (the “CCAA Order”) in the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (the “CCAA”) proceedings of the Indalex group of Canadian companies (collectively, “Indalex”).

During the past 14 months, courts in Ontario have rendered three decisions dealing with the application of limitation periods to claims for fraudulent conveyances or preferences. A “limitation period” is a period of time, specified in a statute, within which a plaintiff must commence a court proceeding to seek a remedy. Otherwise, the claim is said to be “statute-barred” and an action to enforce the claim will be dismissed.

The recent decisions have brought some clarity to the law in this area, but have left other questions unanswered.

Background

In the recent case of Peterborough (City) v. Kawartha Native Housing Society, the Ontario Court of Appeal was asked to determine:

Unremitted source deductions are subject to a deemed trust in favour of the Crown under Section 227 of the Income Tax Act (the “ITA”), Section 86 of theEmployment Insurance Act (the “EIA”) and Section 23 of the Canada Pension Plan (the “CPP”). Subsection 227(4) of the ITA creates the trust for income tax deductions and Subsection 227(4.1) creates a super-priority lien in favour of the Crown, in the amount of the trust, over all the debtor’s assets.

In its recent decision in Century Services Inc v Canada,1 the Supreme Court of Canada (the “SCC”) held that, in the context of a Companies’Creditors Arrangement Act2 (the “CCAA”) proceeding, the Crown does not have a superpriority claim over the property of a debtor for unremitted goods and services tax (“GST”) amounts. The decision of the SCC majority rejected existing appellate-level case law, and brought the priority of Crown claims in-line with what they are in bankruptcy proceedings.

The case of Canrock Ventures LLC v. Ambercore Software Inc. et al is a cautionary tale for a Receiver and its counsel alike. In this case, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice rejected a Receiver’s application for the approval of an asset purchase agreement because of a failure to take the requisite steps when conducting a sale process and, in the Court’s view, failing to remain a neutral officer of the Court.