Articles 2020

It is with great sadness that we report that the former Registrar in Bankruptcy, Master Murray Ferron has passed away. Many of us began our insolvency careers in his Chambers and he was always a fair and decent Registrar and man with a great judicial legacy.

In what can only be described as a bitter pill to swallow for the professionals involved, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Duca Financial Services Credit Union Ltd. v. 2203284 Ontario Inc. has refused to approve the inadvertently-omitted fees and disbursements of its own receiver and receiver’s legal counsel, notwithstanding the highly unusual outcome that all other creditors had already been paid in full (thanks, ironically, in part to the efforts of the very receiver in question).

In Chandos Construction Ltd. v. Deloitte Restructuring Inc., a decision released on October 2, 2020, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the anti-deprivation rule in the common law of Canada. The dispute in this case revolved around a construction contract between Chandos Construction Ltd. and Capital Steel Inc. that included a clause which provided a fee of 10% of the contract price for the inconvenience and for monitoring the work in the event of Capital Steel’s bankruptcy.

In a recent decision in Urbancorp Cumberland 2 GP Inc. (Re) (“Urbancorp”), the Court of Appeal held that statutory trusts can arise under the Construction Act over sale proceeds received by a court officer in a court-supervised sale process under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (“CCAA”). The decision also limited the application of the Court of Appeal’s earlier decision in Re Veltri Metal Products Co.

This award-winning article provides an in-depth case comment and analysis of Alberta Securities Commission v Hennig from Mandy Bedford, recipient of this year's Michael MacNaughton Student Writing Award for Insolvency Law.

Minutes from the May 5th meeting of the Commercial List Users’ Committee (CLUC).

This article considers three key issues at the intersection of construction and insolvency law: (1) the “stay of proceedings;” (2) the operation of the Construction Act trust provisions in an insolvency context; and (3) the treatment of suppliers critical to the restructuring of a construction business.

Minutes from the March 16th meeting of the Commercial List Users’ Committee (CLUC).

The recent decision in Norcon Marine Services Ltd., (Re), 2019 NLSC 238 (“Norcon”) may have important implications beyond Newfoundland and Labrador. In Norcon, the Court denied an application for a Court-appointed receivership on the basis that the applicant did not demonstrate that a Court-supervised process was “necessary”. In so deciding, among other reasons, the Court put an emphasis on the availability of a private receivership as an adequate alternative avenue of relief.