John has a wealth of experience assisting clients with what he calls “Corporate Divorce” - helping business partners and shareholders, as well as spouses and family members, disentangle their financial affairs when those business and familial relationships break down. His extensive experience in the resolution of business partnership and shareholder oppression disputes allows him to provide a practical, business-oriented perspective to the practice of family law and estates litigation.
John advocates for his clients in courts and tribunals, in direct negotiations with the other side, or through the use of alternative dispute resolution (mediations and arbitrations). He has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada, the Nunavut Court of Justice, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and various other Ontario courts and tribunals.
Through his sports law practice, John is lucky enough to be able to fuse his love for athletics with his career. He represents various amateur hockey and soccer associations, from the local to the national level, as well as athletes.
Franchising is a prominent business model in Ontario. John has experience helping both franchisors and franchisees resolve their business disputes under the very technical Arthur Wishart Act (Franchise Disclosure), 2000.
John represents both plaintiffs and professionals in matters involving negligence and professional discipline complaints against accountants, lawyers, engineers, real estate agents, financial advisors, insurance brokers, dental hygienists and others. By way of example, in 2014, he succeeded in having the conviction of his client for professional misconduct overturned because the client had been denied his right to a fair hearing. In another regulatory matter, John appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada on a case that clarified the law on the applicable limitation period for the prosecution of securities-related offences and the standard of review on appeals from orders made by specialized tribunals.
Construction and real estate development are significant sectors of Ontario’s economy. John assists landlords, tenants, developers, builders, consultants, contractors and tradespeople in all forms of real estate, landlord-tenant, construction and condominium disputes, including under the Construction Lien Act, the Ontario New Home Warranty Plan Act (Tarion), and the Condominium Act, 1998.
John has extensive experience assisting clients with fraud detection and investigations, and in pursuing the fraudsters to recover his clients’ property. He uses various legal tools to get results, including mandatory and prohibitory injunctions (court orders to do or refrain from doing something), Mareva injunctions (asset freeze orders) and Anton Piller injunctions (civil search and seizure orders). He also helps clients in all aspects of banking and debtor-creditor litigation, including asset recovery, mortgage and security enforcement (power of sale) and financial restructuring law (bankruptcy and receiverships).
John has experience handling product liability cases, where defective products caused harm to people or property, as well as environmental contamination cases. In addition, John has acted both for and opposite various levels of government and is therefore familiar with the special considerations and challenges that can arise when government is involved.
Other areas in which John assists clients include defamation, privacy, class actions, the enforcement of non-competition covenants against departed employees or vendors of businesses, and foreign judgments.
John is the editor of the firm’s Commercial Litigation Update newsletter and a blog entitled “Blaneys Appeals Blog”, which is dedicated to summarizing all civil law decisions released by the Court of Appeal for Ontario on a weekly basis. The blog receives several thousand reads a month and is circulated widely through various legal information media, including Mondaq, Lexology, CanLii and the OBA website.