Tewari v. Desiccare, Inc., 2025 ONSC 2980

Court File No.: CV-22-00004105-0000
Date: 2025-05-20
Court: Superior Court of Justice - Ontario

Between:
Gaurav Tewari, Plaintiff
and
Desiccare, Inc., Hantover Canada Inc., Ken Blakenhorn, Ted McIntyre, Marcus Dukes, Cargill Protein, Cargill Limited, Steve Devine, Matthew Gibney, Thomas H. Powers and Multisorb Technologies, Defendants

Before: R.E. Charney

Counsel:

• Gaurav Tewari, Self-Represented
• Andrew Sahai and Emrys Davis, Counsel for the Defendants, Desiccare, Inc., Marcus Dukes and Thomas D. McIntyre
• Jenna Rumeo and Kevin Graham, Counsel for the Defendant, Hantover Canada Inc.
• Andrew McIntosh, Counsel for the Defendant, Cargill Limited and Matthew Gibney
• Brendan Wong and Shereen Khalfan, Counsel for the Defendant, Multisorb Technologies Inc.

Heard: In Writing

Case Management Endorsement

Background

[1] On April 2, 2025, the Plaintiff, Gaurav Tewari, requested a case conference before me in my capacity as case management judge.

[2] On April 7, 2025, I asked Dr. Tewari to provide me with a one page summary of the issues he wanted to discuss at the proposed case conference. The Defendants were asked to provide me with a one page summary of their positions with respect to the issues raised by Dr. Tewari.

[3] In accordance with that direction, Dr. Tewari advised that the purpose of the case conference was “to grant permission to file [a] motion for [an] interlocutory injunction under Rule 40 against all Defendants”. He stated that he requested “to file interlocutory injunction motion under Rule 40 to grant injunction for use, sale and marketing of my IP to minimize the damages to me due to continued infringement and breach”.

[4] The Defendants all indicated their opposition to Dr. Tewari being permitted to bring this motion, pointing, inter alia, to Dr. Tewari’s unsatisfied outstanding costs orders owed to the Defendants. These costs orders total approximately $437,000 plus accrued interest. None have been paid. Dr. Tewari stated that he is “not in a financial position to pay them”. These costs orders stem from decisions of the Superior Court and the Court of Appeal.

[5] The Defendants argued that it would not be fair to put them to more legal costs to defend against Dr. Tewari’s proposed Rule 40 interlocutory injunction motion while these costs remain unpaid.

Court’s Direction

[6] On May 11, 2025, I issued the following direction to the parties:

Rule 40.03 of the Rules of Civil Procedure provides as follows:

40.03 On a motion for an interlocutory injunction or mandatory order, the moving party shall, unless the court orders otherwise, undertake to abide by any order concerning damages that the court may make if it ultimately appears that the granting of the order has caused damage to the responding party for which the moving party ought to compensate the responding party.

Given Dr. Tewari’s statement that he is not in a financial position to pay the outstanding costs orders, the Court must enquire whether Dr. Tewari is prepared to sign a Rule 40.03 undertaking as to damages, and ask Dr. Tewari to provide some evidence that he has the financial resources or sufficient assets to comply with any undertaking as to damages that he does give. In the absence of this information, the proposed motion cannot proceed.

Dr. Tewari is also requested to provide the Court and the defendants with a draft Notice of Motion.

Plaintiff’s Response

[7] Dr. Tewari provided his response on May 9, 2025. He provided an affidavit which detailed his financial resources, stating, inter alia:

• I own 24 carat gold worth over $60,000.00.
• I own 99% stock in Ontario corporation: Tewari De-Ox Systems, Inc., which is worth over $50M.
• My corporation has secured PO of $1M from Ontario based federal meat exporter: Riz Global.
• My corporation owns $300K worth of inventory.
• I own land plot of 12,000 square feet, worth approximately $350K.

[8] The Plaintiff’s draft Notice of Motion requests the Court:

[T]o grant interlocutory motion under Rule 40.01 to prohibit defendant to do any business-operations including but not limited to sales and marketing and application of “oxygen scavengers” in their manufacturing operations in Ontario pending the disposition of the matter, and the Plaintiff seeks immediate interlocutory judgment against the defendants.

Defendants’ Response

[9] The Defendants have all responded, pointing out the lack of admissible evidence to support Dr. Tewari’s financial claims and the “plain and obvious contradiction” between Dr. Tewari’s financial claims and his previous position that he is not in a financial position to be able to pay the costs awards from previous decisions. The Defendants point to earlier court submissions by Dr. Tewari where he claimed to be impecunious, and provided a screen shot of his bank accounts which indicate that he had a balance of $148.27 CAD and $100 USD.

[10] The Defendants take the position that if we are to believe Dr. Tewari’s assertion that he is worth many millions of dollars, he should not be permitted to bring additional motions until he has satisfied his costs obligations to the Defendants from previous motions.

Conclusion

[11] I agree with the Defendants that it would be unfair to permit Dr. Tewari to bring any additional motions against these Defendants until he has satisfied the various costs orders made by previous courts. Once these costs orders have been satisfied, Dr. Tewari may renew his request to bring his proposed motion.

R.E. Charney
Date: May 20, 2025