Our Work

Simon Bieber, Robert Trenker, and Katie Glowach acted as successful trial counsel for the plaintiff in this precedent-setting real estate partnership dispute in the Manitoba. 

The parties operated a successful real estate development partnership for approximately 20 years. They purchased, developed and leased commercial real estate throughout Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwestern Ontario. Each of the three partners owned a 1/3 beneficial interest in the partnership properties, worth approximately $150 million. The partnership agreement required that the partners make major decisions on a unanimous basis. Litigation arose when the defendants began refusing to honour the partnership agreement, denying the existence of a partnership, and purporting to govern by majority rule. 

In advance of trial, AGB obtained an interlocutory injunction and preservation order—the first of its kind in a partnership context in Canada—that restrained the defendants from selling, encumbering, or leasing the properties they co-own with the plaintiff without the plaintiff’s prior consent.

This interlocutory order paved the way for our team to obtain similarly novel relief at trial, another first of its kind in Canada: an order distributing partnership assets in-kind amongst the partners (as opposed to an award of monetary damages, or the sale of the properties and distribution of the proceeds).