Case considered: Budget Waste Inc., Re, 2009 ABQB 752.
PDF version: Restructuring under the CCAA: Should A Debtor Always Be Allowed to Proceed?
LoVecchio J.’s decision in Budget Waste Inc., Re (“Budget Waste“) is a great example of the questions courts need to keep in mind as they are deciding on issues that arise in the context of restructuring proceedings under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-36 (“CCAA“).
Case considered: Balancing Pool v. TransAlta Utilities Corporation, 2009 ABQB 631
PDF version: The Summary Judgment Exception to the Stay of Proceedings in Favour of Arbitration
A recent decision by Chief Justice Neil C. Wittmann resolves two outstanding issues with respect to the summary judgment exception to stays of court proceedings that is found in section 7(2)(e) of the Arbitration Act, R.S.A. 2000, c. A-43. The first question was whether the exception was available in the absence of a motion for summary judgment contemporaneous with the stay application. The second was that of the appropriate test for determining if the dispute was a proper one for summary judgment. The Chief Justice’s answers to these two issues nicely balances public policy in favour of enforcing arbitration agreements with public policy in favour of resolving disputes in the most just and expeditious manner possible. His answer to the first question increases the circumstances under which the summary judgment exception can be considered by a court. His answer to the second proposes a tough standard to meet, thus narrowing the basis on which a court should exercise its discretion to refuse a stay.
Case considered: R. v. Hape, 2007 SCC 26
PDF version: My Vote for R. v. Hape as a Significant Legal Case of the Decade
When the R. v. Hape case was released at the Supreme Court of Canada, there was some negative reaction in the legal community, but its real significance did not become apparent until recently. In particular, it has become very significant in the litigation aimed at bringing Omar Khadr to Canada from Guantánamo Bay.
Unlike my colleagues I was not prepared to plump for just one case or event and so here are my thoughts on ten notable legal and regulatory events for the oil and gas sector in Alberta over the first decade of the millennium. They are in no particular order; I tried to group some together thematically but some are just here in the order in which they came to mind.
Case considered: Rachar v. Litvak, 2009 ABQB 441
PDF version: The Animal Keepers Act: Perennial Problems of Priority
This is the first case to consider the Animal Keepers Act, S.A. 2005, c. A-40.5, a piece of legislation which came into force in November of 2005. It replaced a 101-year-old statute, the Livery Stable Keepers Act, R.S.A. 2000, c.L-14, which was originally enacted in 1884 as an ordinance of the North-West Territories and applied to the area that would become Alberta. According to the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Animal Keepers Act “provides a person who boards or cares for an animal a means of collecting outstanding bills owed by the owner of such animals with priority over all other liens, bills of sales, etc. without the use of costly, complicated legal processes.” The new Act seems to live up to this description. While extensively used by the cattle industry and other keepers of livestock, neither this Act nor its predecessor have been the subject of much judicial consideration. Those rare disputes that have been taken to court tend to involve issues of priority among creditors, as does this case.
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