TABLE OF CONTENTS | CIVIL DECISIONS |  SHORT CIVIL ENDORSEMENTS| CRIMINAL DECISIONS

Good afternoon,

Following are the summaries for this week’s civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. There was one noteworthy decision released relating to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Almost 10 years have passed since Madoff’s confession!

In Fairfield Sentry Limited v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, several Fund companies that invested heavily into Madoff’s scheme brought an action against auditors PWC, asserting that PWC was negligent in performing the audits of the Funds’ financial statements for the two years prior to Madoff’s fraud confession in December 2008.  The Funds alleged that PWC should have uncovered the Ponzi scheme and its failure to do so resulted in damages to the Funds of $2.5 billion. PWC brought a successful motion for summary judgment dismissing the action (note PWC assumed liability for the purposes of the motion and the only issue was whether there was a genuine issue for trial regarding damages). The Court of Appeal dismissed the Funds’ appeal and found that the motion judge, who was faced with several expert opinions ranging from accounting and insolvency to United States law, correctly applied the facts and evidence of this case to the test established in Livent Inc. v Deloitte & Touche for calculating damages.

Continue Reading ONTARIO COURT OF APPEAL SUMMARIES (AUGUST 20 – 24, 2018)