Real Estate Litigation

With several decades of experience acting as counsel to some of Canada’s leading real estate owners and developers, we have gained experience with virtually every type of real estate dispute, including:

• Representing real estate owners in disputes with partners and co-owners.  We recently completed a multi-year mandate that included two court proceedings and two private arbitrations arising from the failure of a major commercial real estate development.  We were successful in each proceeding.
• Representing lenders in complex mortgage enforcement disputes.   Our recent successes include an  appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal to obtain judgment against the guarantor of a multi-million dollar debt involving allegations of undue influence and duress. 
• Representing owners and tenants in major lease disputes.  We acted at trial for a $40M Canadian guarantor of a bankrupt tenant’s Texas lease, involving complex issues of interpretation and mitigation.  
• Representing creditors, debtors and court officers in real estate insolvency matters.  We have, for the past several years, acted as counsel to the court-appointed manager-receiver in more than 200 court appearances before the Commercial List, Ontario Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada in a complex multi-year case involving fraud by the former operators of a real estate development portfolio and the court-supervised sale of 28 commercial and industrial properties with an aggregate value close to $200 million.
• Representing landlords and tenants on rent reset arbitrations.  We have, for example, acted for the successful developer on a 60-day arbitration to set the rent at a high profile Toronto location.
• Representing parties asserting and defending trust claims over real property.  We recently represented the successful plaintiff at a trial relating to whether certain properties acquired by the officers and directors of a company were held in trust for that company.