In a hard-fought shareholder dispute involving a large family company, we achieved a court order to wind-up a significant landholding corporation in the Okanagan valley. In doing so, we successfully ended a dispute between a second generation of family members—which dispute, before our involvement, had drawn on over a decade.
The company at issue owned several apartment complexes, hotels and lot assemblies in the Kelowna area, valued at over $70 million. The instructions of our client, along with a cooperating family member, were to either negotiate a division of assets between the family members or, if an out-of-court settlement was not possible, to obtain a court-ordered remedy to secure our client’s exit from the business.
In a manner consistent with our firm’s tradition of ethical and assertive litigation, we worked closely with our client to investigate the decade-long evidentiary record and build a compelling case for the court. We used our strong command of the evidence as leverage for settlement at the negotiating table. But when we came to believe that a settlement was untenable, we pivoted and pursued our relief aggressively in court. The opposing parties retained a large international law firm to defend against a winding-up order. We prevailed, thereby achieving a long-sought separation of our client’s business interests from the other shareholders and unlocking value in the range of $15 million to $20 million for our client.