Polley Faith successfully challenged the Ontario government’s plan to immediately phase out the customer rebates it promised to our EV automotive client’s customers. Polley Faith moved urgently to bring a judicial review of the government’s policy before it could become effective, shepherding the case from pleadings to a final hearing in about three weeks. The Court rendered a favourable decision less than a week later, resulting in a publicly announced change in the government’s policy. Our client’s customers drove away happy. 

When our global beverages company client decided to wind down a Canadian business line, it hired Polley Faith to defend the ensuing lease disputes. While some American landlords were successful in obtaining injunctions requiring our client to continue operating in certain closed stores, Polley Faith successfully fought a similar injunction in Canada. Polley Faith’s advocacy opened the door to amicable settlements across Canada and an otherwise smooth exit. 

Named Benchmark Canada’s 2019 National Impact Case of the Year, Polley Faith acted for the royalty holder in one of the largest mining royalty cases in Canadian history. The case, which involved over $100 million in disputed royalties, involved the application of highly complex transfer pricing principles, contractual interpretation, and the commercial understanding of producers’ obligations to royalty holders. 

Named Benchmark Canada’s 2021 National Impact Case of the Year, Polley Faith represented the majority shareholder group of Sears Canada in defence of four related and overlapping actions. The actions sought the repayment of a $509,000,000 dividend Sears Canada declared in 2013. We defended insolvency-related actions by the estate receiver, a litigation trustee, a pensioner group and a class action claimant to the eve of trial to secure a favourable settlement representing roughly 4% of our clients’ total exposure.

Some of the world’s largest tech companies have turned to Polley Faith to solve their Canadian issues. We assisted the company behind one of the world’s top-10 most visited websites to appear before Parliamentary and Senate committees to address bet-the-company issues. We have defended big tech against opportunistic lawsuits. We have secured evidence in Canada and completed letters rogatory when it was needed for their foreign legal battles. We have defended our clients in major Privacy Commission, Competition Bureau and other regulatory investigations often associated with parallel U.S. investigations. We speak the language of tech. 

Polley Faith acted for a multi-national renewable energy producer that held a provincial approval to build and operate an industrial wind farm to produce green energy in Ontario. Facing opposition from the local city council, WPD was denied the necessary permits to widen an access road necessary to develop the multi-million dollar project. Polley Faith brought a successful application for judicial review to the Divisional Court, which quashed the resolution passed by the city on the basis that it was passed in bad faith and that it frustrated the WPD’s provincial approvals. The city appealed, and Polley Faith successfully defended the decision at Ontario Court of Appeal. The Sumac Ridge Wind Farm has been producing renewable wind energy since 2017.

Polley Faith knows regulators from the inside and out. In P.E.O. v. Rew, we acted for the Professional Engineers of Ontario in one of the first appeals of a decision by its own discipline committee, succeeding in overturning the decision on multiple grounds. We regularly act as prosecution and enforcement counsel for the Ontario Securities Commission, Law Society of Ontario, Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario, and Professional Engineers of Ontario, among others. We use our “insider knowledge” of regulatory institutions to defend clients subject to regulatory investigations, including before securities regulators (including the OSC), federal and provincial agencies and authorities, and professional regulators. 

Our large hedge-fund client turned to us to gain control over one of its public-company investments. By a successful and urgent application before the Alberta Securities Commission, we helped replace senior management and correct the course at the target company by ousting its entrenched board. We draw on our expertise in securities law, both as prosecutors for the Ontario securities regulator and as defence counsel to public and private corporations, to assist clients engaged in governance and control disputes both in the civil courts and before the regulators. 

We are trusted advisors to special committees, boards, corporations, and individuals when they face existential and reputational threats. Polley Faith draws on its in-house GR, PR, and urgent litigation expertise, and works with some of Canada’s leading reputational advisors, to form expert teams to identify, stabilize, and mitigate crisis situations. As a smaller and nimbler litigation-only firm, we can clear conflicts quickly and act as quickly as the situation requires.