Secured creditors should not allow a liquidator to sell a secured asset without first:

If your terms of trade documents don’t have the correct provisions, you can lose goods supplied to a customer that becomes insolvent, even though you may have title to the goods.

A recent Supreme Court decision highlights the need for retention of title suppliers to have adequate terms of trade documents and to register security interests on the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR) to avoid losing assets if a customer becomes insolvent.

The Manitoba Court of Appeal will consider an interesting insolvency case involving hog feed suppliers who claim of priority for the cost of feed over Farm Credit Canada and Bank of Montreal, the hog producer’s secured creditors. 

In general, the Court found Suppliers may have an unjust enrichment claim arising from an alleged fraud on the part of producer, who allegedly ordered feed while preparing for the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act (“CCAA”) application with no intention of paying for the feed.

The recent decision of the Federal Court in Carter in the matter of Damilock Pty Ltd (Damilock) highlights the need for liquidators to review current practices when paying priority creditors (e.g. employee entitlements).

Facts

The plaintiffs were appointed as administrators of Damilock on 26 June 2007 and subsequently appointed as liquidators by creditors’ resolution at a meeting on 7 September 2007.

For some, environmental liability is akin to a game of hot potato. In other words, no one wants to be the one left holding the potato when the music stops playing - otherwise they could be facing significant obligations to remedy contaminated lands. As remediation costs can be significant, owners, purchasers and creditors must tread carefully when dealing with contaminated real estate.

The PPSA (Personal Property Securities Act) will celebrate its first birthday on 30 January 2013.

The PPSA introduced fundamental changes for business structuring arrangements. Assets that are subject to non-arms’ length lease or hire arrangements can be at risk if the entity that has possession of the property under the lease or hire agreement is placed in liquidation or receivership.

What is a PPS lease?

A ‘PPS lease’ is the lease or hire of property for a period (including options):

The British Columbia case of Botham Holdings Ltd. (Trustee of) v. Braydon Investments Ltd. is a reminder that tax and estate plans must take non-tax issues and law into account. It can be extremely dangerous to let the tax tail wag the dog!

Mr. Botham and a family trust were the shareholders of Botham Holdings Ltd. ("Holdings"). In 2004 Holdings was fortunate enough to realize a large capital gain and, as a result, incurred a significant income tax liability.

Generally speaking, the policy of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (“BIA”) is not to interfere with secured creditors, leaving them free to realize upon their security. While this makes sense in the abstract, the question that is most often posed by secured creditors is “what does this mean in a practical sense?  What exactly do I need to do to retrieve my secured asset?”

Perimeter Transportation Ltd. (Re), 2010 BCCA 509, on appeal from 2009 BCSC 1458

Century Services Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2010 SCC 60

Section 222(3) of the Excise Tax Act creates a deemed trust for unremitted GST, which operates despite any other act of Canada, except the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. However section 18.3(1) of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (the "CCAA") provides that any statutory deemed trust in favour of the Crown does not operate under the CCAA, subject to certain exceptions which do not mention GST.