Posted in Competition Law
The general prohibition on false or misleading advertising under the Competition Act is somewhat unusual in that it contains two adjudicative regimes, criminal and civil, that can be used to address the same conduct – the making of a materially false or misleading representation to the public for the purpose of promoting one’s product or business interest[1]. Continue Reading
Posted in Investigations & Compliance
Join Baker Mckenzie’s global practitioners on Thursday, June 14 for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement Roundtable to gain important insights on:
Posted in Fraud and Insolvency Law, Fraud Prevention, Fraud Recovery
This is our third and final post on the complex fraud carried out by Norma and Ronald Walton, and the Ontario Court of Appeal decisions arising from their scheme. In our earlier posts, we focused on the use of a constructive trust as a remedy for breach of fiduciary duty and third party fraud liability. In this post, we discuss the risk that comes with bringing a summary judgment motion in the context of a complex fraud action. Continue Reading
Posted in Employment Related Fraud
A recent decision from the Ontario Superior Court demonstrates the overlap between civil and criminal findings, and how an employer can use a criminal verdict to recover additional damages in a civil claim. In Atlas Copco Canada Inc. v. David Hillier 2018 ONSC 1558, rendered March 7, 2018, an employer “piggybacked” off of a criminal court decision to recover an additional $20 million from an ex-senior employee who accepted payments and benefits in return for allowing a fraud to continue.
This decision highlights an employer’s possible options for fraud recovery, as well as the steep costs for employees of participating in fraudulent schemes. Continue Reading
Posted in Fraud Recovery
We previously reported in an article last August that Ontario Courts are increasingly finding civil fraud on the basis of material omissions, as in the United Kingdom. This trend has continued in a recent decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Wang v Shao, 2018 BCSC 377.
The case involved the aborted sale of a home in Vancouver’s upscale Shaughnessy neighbourhood for a purchase price of $6.138 million. After viewing the home, the purchaser specifically inquired through real estate agents why the vendor was selling it. The vendor’s daughter (who held power of attorney) claimed that she was selling the home because her daughter had changed schools. The purchaser was satisfied with this answer, and executed an agreement of purchase and sale. However the answer was found to be incomplete. In fact, she was also selling the home because her husband (who was alleged to be associated with a criminal gang) had been murdered outside the home two years earlier and there were concerns about the safety of the family. Continue Reading