original lower court decision<\/a> remains in place. That decision also found Sunterra\u2019s president, Ray Price, personally responsible, along with the Sunterra entities, for the losses.<\/p>\nSunterra runs farm operations and a chain of popular grocery stores, with retail locations in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer.<\/p>\n
Sunterra was aiming to appeal a January decision made by Justice Michael Lema.<\/p>\n
In that decision, Lema wrote that Sunterra\u2019s Canadian and U.S. companies sent cheques back and forth across the border \u201cat high volumes, in large amounts, for reasons unrelated to actual business activity, with the express aim of \u2018covering\u2019 account shortfalls by the \u2018deposit\u2019 of incoming cheques themselves not anchored on actual cash balances.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrote that \u201cthe irresistible conclusion is that Sunterra engaged in cheque kiting, on an astonishing scale.\u201d <\/p>\n
He likened the situation to the game of musical chairs, where there aren’t enough seats for the players when the music stops.<\/p>\n
Sunterra had argued that both lenders understood and accepted the cheque-based system, which \u201caimed at ensuring, on an ongoing basis, that no overdrafts were experienced on either side of the border.\u201d<\/p>\n
In seeking an appeal, Sunterra argued that Lema \u201cmade errors of law, fact and mixed fact and law\u201d in his ruling, and that Lema shifted the burden of proof unfairly onto them, and ruled that cheque kiting occurred \u201cwithout expert opinion evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crighton said although she acknowledged \u201cthe potential significance of the action to the parties,\u201d she reviewed their proposed arguments and found them too weak to move forward, noting they lacked “prima facie merit,” meaning they did not look legally valid.<\/p>\n
Compeer had also appealed specific parts of Lema\u2019s ruling. In the ruling, Price was found personally liable for the debt, but Lema didn\u2019t hold two other Sunterra employees personally responsible. Crighton declined Compeer\u2019s request to appeal that part of the ruling.<\/p>\n
Since last year, Sunterra has been operating under the Companies\u2019 Creditors Arrangement Act, an insolvency process designed to give companies time to restructure while temporarily shielding them from creditors.<\/p>\n
Art Price, the company’s chairman,\u00a0said the Court of Appeal decided Sunterra did not meet the threshold that applies to CCAA rulings, and therefore the leave to appeal was denied. <\/p>\n
“The normal CCAA process continues and we expect to have the amount of the damages awarded to Compeer finalized in the next few weeks,” he wrote in a text message.<\/p>\n
“Once that determination is made, we expect to develop a restructuring plan or other strategic transactions that, subject to court approval, would allow Sunterra to deal with its creditors and emerge from CCAA as a going concern.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-627002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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