Lily Harmer

In the context of CCAA proceedings for Sears Canada, the Monitor brought a motion to enforce a settlement agreement with several former landlords regarding the valuation of their claims.

The landlords disputed the Monitor's calculation of their claims under the agreed Landlord Claim Formula and sought disclosure of the underlying calculations.

The court held that the landlords were entitled to the disclosure and could dispute the calculations, but only using the sources permitted by the formula.

Additionally, the court ordered one landlord, Primaris, to repay $10,000 it had unilaterally withheld for legal fees when returning a mistaken payment.

The Monitor in the CCAA proceedings of Nortel Networks Corporation brought a motion to pass its accounts and those of its legal counsel for the period from January 2009 to May 2016.

The fees sought totaled over $250 million CAD and USD combined.

The court applied the Belyea factors to assess the fairness and reasonableness of the fees.

Despite the unprecedented size of the fees, the court found them justified given the massive scale, complexity, and duration of the cross-border insolvency, the extraordinary powers granted to the Monitor, and the highly successful results achieved for the Canadian estate.

The accounts were approved in full.

Various parties brought motions seeking reconsideration or clarification of a prior joint allocation decision determining the distribution of $7.3 billion in escrow among debtor estates in multinational insolvency proceedings.

The moving parties argued that aspects of the allocation methodology—including treatment of bond guarantee claims, certain asset sale proceeds, intercompany claims, tax claims, and settled claims—required amendment or clarification.

The court reiterated that reconsideration is an exceptional remedy and rejected most requests because the issues either had been addressed at trial or could have been raised earlier.

Limited clarification was granted regarding the treatment of bondholder claims against guarantors and recognition of certain court‑approved settled pre‑filing claims that had been paid.

Other requested clarifications or amendments were denied.

The plaintiffs, franchisees of Shoppers Drug Mart, brought a proposed class action alleging breach of contract, breach of the duty of good faith, unjust enrichment, and breach of fiduciary duty regarding the franchisor's retention of rebates and professional allowances, and its practices regarding cost recovery fees, budgeting, and inventory.

The defendants brought a Rule 21 motion to strike the claims for disclosing no reasonable cause of action.

The court struck the claims for rebates, breach of fiduciary duty, interference with association, and duty of disclosure, finding them untenable based on the clear language of the franchise agreements.

However, the court allowed the claims regarding professional allowances, cost recovery fees, budgeting practices, and inventory practices to proceed, finding it was not plain and obvious they would fail.