Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

A recent Ontario Superior Court case will be of interest to commercial landlords and tenants alike.

In 1251614 Ontario Ltd v. Gurudutt, the tenant signed a 10 year lease that granted the tenant the right to renew the lease for 2 further terms of 5 years each, with rental rates to be negotiated at the time of renewal and settled by arbitration, if necessary. In addition, the lease ...

A recent case from the BC Supreme Court has highlighted yet again that a guarantee or indemnity of a lease (here now referred to as an “Indemnity”) does not necessarily assure payment to a landlord following a default by a tenant.  The terms of the Indemnity must be carefully scrutinized and examined to determine if the specific circumstances outlined in the document are ...

Frequent readers of this blog may recall a post from October 2012, in which we wrote about a Supreme Court of Canada decision that some believed, at the time, would result in the “death knell” for the remedy of specific performance in Canada at least in respect of commercial real estate transactions.  Since then, many courts have indeed grappled with whether that ...

Deciding what to do with a defaulting commercial tenant can be a trap for the unwary. A recent decision from the BC Court of Appeal has confirmed that once a landlord has elected to pursue a certain remedy or course of action as against a defaulting tenant, that election may well be irrevocable such that a landlord may not “switch horses” and later elect to pursue a different ...

On Thursday January 23, 2014 the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) issued two related decisions that may ultimately go a long way to the possible extinction of the conventional civil trial.  In Hryniak v. Mauldin 2014 SCC 7 and the companion case of Bruno Appliance & Furniture Inc. v. Hryniak 2014 SCC 8, the SCC in unanimous 7 – 0 decisions, issued very strong statements ...

The Supreme Court of Canada released its decision today in Southcott Estates Inc. v. Toronto Catholic District School Board, 2012 SCC 51 which addressed a number of thorny issues relevant to commercial real estate disputes including whether a Plaintiff must mitigate its damages where it has made a claim for specific performance of a real estate contract.  The decision has ...

Ever since the BC Court of Appeal (“BCCA”) decision in Shimco, practitioners and others have cried out for legislative amendments to the B.C. Builders Lien Act (the “Act”) which would see the elimination of a lien against holdback monies retained by owners and others down the contractual chain.  Prior to Shimco, such a lien was not generally thought to exist.  ...

Frequent readers of this blog will recall a post from September of this year where we wrote about an interesting case from the B.C. Supreme Court in which a defaulter under a purchase and sale agreement involving certain real property was able to avoid a claim for damages.  The court had found that the vendor did not properly mitigate her damages thereby relieving the defaulting ...

Amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) and related new legislation came into force in the summer of 2008 which were aimed at significantly enhancing and protecting, among other things, employee related claims against bankrupt or insolvent companies.  The amendments included a super priority charge over all assets for some, but not all, pension claims as ...

Imagine being faced with attempting to sell a piece of real estate in a soft market.  You eventually obtain the price you are willing to accept and therefore you enter into a binding contract.  Unfortunately, the deal does not close because the purchaser is either not able to secure financing or is delayed in obtaining financing (perhaps because the banks are worried about the ...