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John L. Finnigan
PRACTICE
John Finnigan is a founding partner of ThorntonGroutFinnigan LLP and is the head of the firm's litigation practice group. Mr. Finnigan has practised a broad range of complex commercial litigation. He has acted as counsel in breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, negligence, professional malpractice and shareholder disputes. Mr. Finnigan has appeared as counsel at trial and on appeal before every level of court in Ontario including in the Superior Court and Court of Appeal. He has also appeared as counsel in the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, the Quebec Superior Court, the Quebec Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. Mr. Finnigan's clients regularly include major financial institutions, government agencies and professional accounting firms. Mr. Finnigan was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1984.
PROFESSIONAL INVOLVEMENT
Mr. Finnigan has been counsel on a number of recent high profile cases, including: counsel to the Receiver, KPMG Inc., in the receivership and bankruptcy of the Portus Group of Companies (Canada's largest hedge fund scandal with over $800 million in investor funds at risk). The Portus case involved the execution of creative and complex litigation strategies to trace and recover investor funds through multiple jurisdictions across the world; counsel to the Receiver, RSM Richter Inc., in the Norshield hedge fund scandal (Canada's second largest hedge fund scandal). This mandate involved the investigation and recovery efforts on $400 million in investor funds through a complex multi–jurisdictional investment structure; counsel to a committee of unsecured bondholders of Calpine Corporation subsidiaries in oppression remedy proceedings in the Nova Scotia Superior Court and the subsequent cross–border restructuring cases of Calpine Corporation and its subsidiaries in Calgary and New York. The Calpine litigation involved appearing as counsel on a number of complex contested hearings in Nova Scotia and Alberta. The case was successfully concluded with the bondholders receiving full payment on their securities; counsel to a committee of contesting bondholders in the BCE privatization proceeding. BCE is the subject of the world's largest leveraged buy–out with an enterprise value of $52 billion.
Mr. Finnigan represented a group of institutional bondholders including some of Canada's largest insurers and financial institutions in opposing the proposed buy–out by a consortium led by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board. This remarkable case drew international attention as it sped through three levels of Court, including the Supreme Court of Canada, in less than nine months.
Mr. Finnigan is a member of the Civil Litigation Section of the Canadian Bar Association and the Advocate's Society. He is regularly invited to speak at continuing education conferences on a broad range of commercial litigation topics, including corporate governance and the obligations of corporate officers and directors.
Mr. Finnigan is a director of the Worldwide Orphans Foundation of Canada, a charity dedicated to improving the lives of institutionalized orphans throughout the world. Mr. Finnigan lives in Oakville, Ontario, with his wife and four children.
EDUCATION
Mr. Finnigan obtained his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario in 1982 where he won the Carson–Killeen Award for Advocacy.
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