The Federal Court declined to amend a Mareva injunction (i.e. asset freezing injunction) to allow a defendant to sell several real estate properties ostensibly to pay his lawyers fees. The Court allowed the defendant to sell a truck bought in 2022; but was curious how he could have bought the vehicle in the first place in light of the injunction. After noting the defendant’s failure to justify his lack of income from which to pay legal fees; and questioning what happened to $744,000 in liquid financial assets the defendant owned in 2020, the Court considered the defendant’s lack of transparency to be a bar to amending the order. The Court held to get such relief, the defendant must first prove he “has no other assets available to pay his [legal] expenses other than those frozen by the injunction” and the defendant had failed to meet the prerequisite. The motion was denied with costs to the plaintiffs.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. White (Beast IPTV), 2023 FC 164