News + Insights

On June 17, 2024, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released its judgment in Aghdasi v. Asiyaban, 2024 ONSC 3472.

Gord McGuire and Sean Pierce were trial counsel in this dispute over investment properties that the plaintiff and defendant purchased while in a common-law relationship. The defendant had initiated the litigation by obtaining a Certificate of Pending Litigation (“CPL”) over the plaintiff’s property on a without-notice motion, relying on what the Court found at trial to be “fake invoices” that the defendant had “deliberately submitted … to mislead the court.”

After successfully setting the CPL aside in 2020, AGB lawyers were successful in representing the plaintiff at trial, obtaining a judgment that awarded the plaintiff damages for the improperly registered CPL, along with a 50% interest in a commercial property that was not registered in her name. The Court also denied the defendant's mirror claim to an interest in the plaintiff’s property and all of the defendant’s further counterclaims.

In an awarding $100,000 in punitive damages to the plaintiff for the defendant’s “malicious” litigation conduct, Justice Papageorgiou accepted and incorporated into her reasons AGB's submission that "[m]any women in [the plaintiff's] position—an immigrant with limited liquid assets and whose ex-romantic partner was abusing the Court system to threaten and intimidate her—would not have had the resources to fight back. Left unpunished, intimidation tactics like Vahid’s could well succeed.”

The Court's full reasons for judgment can be viewed here.