John T. Porter

Bio

John’s practice focuses on oral advocacy in respect of complex corporate/commercial litigation, including shareholder disputes, corporate fraud, commercial torts, professional negligence and the representation of financial institutions with respect to security enforcement and priority disputes.

John has also acted as litigation counsel in connection with a wide variety of insolvency and restructuring proceedings. He has appeared at all levels of the Ontario Courts, and before the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of Canada. John was a partner at a large national law firm, but left to join TGF in 2007.

Representative Mandates

• Counsel to Coopers & Lybrand in connection with its restructuring proceedings, and litigation counsel in connection with the successful defence of claims against Coopers with a value of approximately $400M.
• Along with John Finnigan, court-appointed counsel representing 630,000 policy holders in the demutualization of Economical Mutual Insurance Company. Mandate to represent policy holders in negotiation of the allocation of $2 billion in benefits among policy holders.
• Counsel to a syndicate of lenders in an action against a major North American air carrier involving claims of approximately $80M USD.
• Court-appointed litigation counsel to the Litigation Trustee of Cash Store Financial Services Inc.
• Acted on behalf of a committee of contesting bondholders in the BCE privatization, which involved the world’s largest leveraged buy-out with an enterprise value of $52 billion, ultimately appearing at the Supreme Court of Canada.
• Acted as litigation counsel to seven Canadian airport authorities in the dispute over entitlement to seize the aircraft of Canada 3000, culminating in a successful appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
• Counsel to the Federal Government in relation to numerous mining insolvencies, including Curragh Inc., Anvil Range and Royal Oak Mines.
• Representing the debtors in the recognition under the CCAA of foreign main proceedings involving Hartford Computer Hardware, Inc. and under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.
• Debtor counsel in CCAA filing of Farley WinDoor Ltd.
• Counsel to the debtors in the CCAA proceeding involving Ghana Gold Corp.
• Counsel to environmental regulators in connection with numerous mining insolvencies.