Amethyst Haighton

Following a successful motion for a Mareva injunction freezing $20 million of the respondent husband's assets, the applicant wife sought costs on a full recovery basis.

The court found the husband acted in bad faith by failing to make financial disclosure, breaching preservation orders, and hiding assets.

As a result, mandatory full recovery costs were ordered under Rule 24(10).

The court reduced the requested amount of $184,450 to $125,000 to reflect a fair and reasonable amount, noting overstaffing by the wife's legal team.

The applicants sought to convert an application into an action and consolidate it with a related action.

The respondents opposed, seeking to strike the action for lack of corporate authority and arguing against consolidation.

The court found that while the action was technically deficient due to improper director authorization, the appropriate remedy was a stay pending delivery of a properly authorized resolution, not dismissal.

The court granted consolidation and conversion of the application to an action, finding substantial overlap in the pleadings and common factual and legal issues.

The applicants were substantially successful and awarded costs of $75,000.

The appellants appealed decisions of the Capital Markets Tribunal finding they engaged in a course of conduct that perpetrated a fraud on investors by raising funds for a specific real estate project and diverting them for other purposes.

The Tribunal ordered administrative fines, disgorgement, costs, and permanent market bans with a limited carve-out.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding no palpable and overriding errors of fact or errors of law in the Tribunal's liability findings or sanctions.

The defendants sought to remove Stikeman Elliott LLP as counsel for the plaintiffs and to require destruction of documents containing their solicitor-client privileged information, alleging improper handling of privileged communications.

The court found that the privilege in the relevant emails was jointly held by both the sellers and the companies in the Ellis Group, and that the amalgamated company (Ellis Packaging Limited) continued to hold the privilege after the share purchase.

The motion was dismissed.

The Ontario Securities Commission alleged that TeknoScan Systems Inc. and three of its officers and directors perpetrated a securities fraud and made misleading statements to investors regarding a share purchase transaction.

The Capital Markets Tribunal found that the respondents perpetrated a fraud on preferred shareholders who opted into the transaction by omitting fundamental and essential facts from a notice, rendering it objectively dishonest and misleading.

The Tribunal also found that TeknoScan made a materially misleading statement to shareholders, and that the individual respondents authorized, permitted, or acquiesced in this breach.

Allegations of making misleading statements to the Commission were dismissed.

This is an appeal of a decision by the Joint Compliance Audit Committee for the Town of Oakville, which authorized a compliance audit of a municipal councillor's campaign finances.

The appellant argued that the applicant for the audit lacked standing because they were not an elector of the specific ward in which the councillor ran.

The court, applying the modern principle of statutory interpretation and the presumption of consistent expression, found that the relevant statutory provision (s. 88.33(1) of the Municipal Elections Act, 1996) must be read in conjunction with s. 19(7) of the same Act, which limits an elector's voting entitlement to their ward of residence in ward-divided municipalities.

Consequently, the court held that only an elector residing in the specific ward has standing to request a compliance audit for a candidate in that ward.

The Committee's decision to order the audit was set aside due to the applicant's lack of standing.

The appellants appealed decisions of the Capital Markets Tribunal finding they engaged in illegal insider trading and tipping regarding Amaya Gaming Group Inc.'s acquisition of PokerStars, and imposing sanctions including market bans and administrative penalties.

The appellants argued the Tribunal erred in relying on circumstantial evidence, misapplying the law on similar fact evidence, and imposing punitive sanctions.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeals, finding no palpable and overriding errors in the Tribunal's factual findings or inferences, and holding that the sanctions were protective and within the Tribunal's wide discretion.

The respondents entered into a settlement agreement with Staff of the Ontario Securities Commission regarding allegations of unregistered trading, illegal distribution, and making misleading statements in connection with the promotion and sale of cryptocurrency tokens (Axia Coin).

The respondents admitted to breaching multiple provisions of the Securities Act and agreed to pay administrative penalties, disgorgement, and costs, as well as to permanent market bans.

The Capital Markets Tribunal approved the settlement agreement, finding it to be in the public interest and within a range of reasonable outcomes.