Paralegal held liable because she allowed a mortgage transaction to be completed after the proposed mortgagor had sold the property to a numbered company. The trial judge determined that, after advancing funds in her trust account without notifying the mortgagee of the change in the ownership of the property, the paralegal breached her trust obligations and disregarded the interests of the party she was retained to protect.
This article has been contributed to the blog by Ziyi Shi. Ziyi Shi is an associate cross-appointed to the Corporate Group and Insolvency and Restructuring Group of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.
In the context of a tenant’s bankruptcy, Justice Romaine of the Alberta Queens Bench recently characterized a deposit provided under a lease as a security interest, as opposed to pre-paid rent, forcing an unsecured landlord to remit the money to a trustee in bankruptcy.
The existence of trusts that may be connected to a borrower’s assets can be a lending hazard. They do not appear on PPSA search print-outs and, in many cases, they are not shown on a borrower’s financial statements and cannot be searched through traditional due diligence methods.
On June 6, 2014, Justice Brown of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) released additional reasons1 to his decision in Romspen Investment Corp. v. 6711162 Canada Inc., 2014 ONSC 2781, centred on the cost submissions made by counsel to Romspen Investment Corp. (“Romspen”). Despite a contractual provision in a mortgage agreement that gave the applicant, Romspen, a right to full indemnity costs from the respondents, Justice Brown found that the legal fees incurred by counsel to Romspen were unreasonable.
This article has been contributed by Martin Desrosiers and Julien Morissette, partner and associate respectively, in the Insolvency & Restructuring Group of
The general principle is that security granted on tangible property also charges the property’s accessories. That is not the case however when intellectual property (“IP”) rights belonging to a third party attach to inventory1. For such rights are not considered to be accessories and thus are not charged by the security, unless the holder of the IP rights has otherwise agreed.
If the grantor of the security goes bankrupt, enforcement of the creditor’s security could thus be compromised because of the third-party IP rights.
On January 14, 2015, Target Corporation ("Target US") announced the exit of substantially all of its Canadian operations less than two years after opening its first Canadian stores in a strategic push to operate at least one store in every province of Canada. The following day, on January 15, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) in Toronto (the "Court") granted Target Canada Co.
Un avis de cotisation de l’Agence du revenu du Canada (l’ARC) constitue une mesure de recouvrement prouvable au sens de l’article 69.3 de la Loi sur la faillite et l’insolvabilité (LFI). Lorsque l’ARC est un créancier non garanti, la réclamation est sujette à la suspension des procédures de l’article 69.3 LFI, et pour lever cette suspension, l’ARC doit se présenter devant le tribunal, tel que prévu par l’article 69.4 LFI.
Recent decisions in the Ontario courts have brought this issue to the forefront, which is salient during this time of economic uncertainty for the oil industry and its related environmental obligations. The courts have had to focus on balancing competing public interests: those of creditors and the general health and safety of the public when a debtor has an outstanding obligation to remediate its pollution.