December 15, 2025
In an annual round up of Lexpert's top 10 business decisions, Aquino v. Bondfield Construction Co., 2024 SCC 31 was featured as one of the most significant judicial rulings affecting the business community in 2024-2025.
Torys partner Jeremy Opolsky, who acted as lead counsel in this case to the respondent KSV Restructuring Inc., said the ruling “is going to make it easier for insolvent companies to collect on behalf of their creditors from corporate insiders who defraud.”
In Aquino, the Supreme Court of Canada “clarified corporate attribution in insolvency-related recovery and its interaction with s. 96 and limitations analysis,” which has directs impacts and implications for trustees, monitors, and creditors, the Lexpert article says.
Read: Did I do that? SCC considers corporate attribution doctrine in bankruptcy and insolvency context
Aquino is now the leading precedent on the doctrine of corporate attribution and the “transfer at undervalue” provisions of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.
“The reason why we have a corporate attribution or corporate identification doctrine is that corporations don’t have a mind of their own,” Jeremy told Lexpert. “They act through people. They think through people.”
The core inquiry, he explained, is: “What does a company know? What does it think? What does it mean? What does it intend?”
The starting point for these considerations is not a “rigid test, but instead, you have to look at why you’re asking the question in the first place,” Jeremy said.
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