At Investigation Counsel, we receive inquiries from fraud victims, often through the internet, requesting information on alternatives to traditional civil recovery due to the cost of private litigation. One such request was for information as to whether recoveries are viable by making a claim under Ontario’s Civil Remedies Act. In July 2017, we published a blog post entitled what Fraud Victims Should Know About Recovery Through the Civil Remedies Act . This post provides an…

In our prior blog, Why the Criminal Process is Secondary in Fraud Recovery – Part I – Criminal Search Rights Override Victim Recovery Rights, we summarized the recently released case of  R. v. Tashanna Mullings, 2019 ONSC 2408, published by the Ontario Courts. The bottom line of that case is that fraud victims need to understand that the Canadian criminal justice system, in its application of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, does…

This blog summarizes a recently published decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, R. v. Tashanna Mullings, 2019 ONSC 2408, which once again demonstrates why fraud victims are, in most cases, well advised to withhold making a criminal case in fraud cases at least until such time as there is no reasonable prospect of recovery. Fraud victims need to understand that the Canadian criminal justice system, in its application of the Canadian Charter of…

Pleading fraud is a more specialized task than pleading other kinds of allegations. According Rule 25.06 of Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure, fraud must be pleaded with particulars of material facts due to the serious nature of the allegations. This is a topic we at Investigation Counsel PC have written about previously. You may access that blog post here. This blog summarizes a recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice which assists…

This blog summarizes a recently published decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal which somewhat clarifies the where the line is drawn between a lawyer’s fair and zealous advocacy for their client and their liability for civil fraud for deceiving the Court and opposing counsel with false statements. In our fraud recovery litigation, from time to time, we encounter lawyers for alleged fraudsters who make positive statements on behalf of their clients with the intention…

At Investigation Counsel PC, we are often asked by victims of fraud for advice with respect to negotiating settlements in fraud actions. To state the obvious, fraud victims often have a well-founded skepticism that the defendant they settled with cannot be trusted to fulfill their settlement obligations honourably. In 2018 we acted as counsel for Kuwait investors who lost $1.8M to a British Columbia based business associate. At the eve of trial, a $2.7M settlement…

On September 6, 2018, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench released its decision in TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. v Ghebrezghi, 2018 ABQB 646 (“Ghebrezghi”). This case was highly relevant to one of our cases due to the similar factual matrix. In Ghebrezghi, the investor rolled the dice in a trial against TD Waterhouse and had his entire case dismissed with costs to be ordered against him.  In our case, the investor took a more conservative…