About
Michael began working with Barry Papazian, Alan Heisey and Ben Forrest in 1992. The four of them formed Papazian Heisey Myers as founding partners in 2001.
Experience
- founding partner of the firm
- 40+ years’ experience practicing law in Ontario
- current practice focuses on debt collection and other contract enforcement – which combines the law of contract with commercial litigation strategy and uses the latter as a tool to assist in the settlement of business and non-business contract disputes
- Michael has also developed an ‘urgent’ (or express) litigation practice allowing him to get into Court within days (and sometimes within hours) of being retained, rather than the usual months and months of delay in standard litigation
- urgent or express litigation is a very effective tool when asking the Court to allow an agreement of purchase and sale to close, or to allow a mortgagee to continue with its mortgage enforcement, or to obtain a Mareva injunction locking down a suspect fraudster’s bank accounts and assets
- underlying this somewhat unique focus is Michael’s detailed knowledge of the law of contract formation, contract default, contract enforcement and contract remedies of all kinds stemming from decades of experience involving all aspects of real estate based commercial law, when acting for landlords, tenants, borrowers and lenders
- frequent appearances in Toronto’s Commercial Court have allowed Michael to appreciate the nuances of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act of Canada and to use that legislation to successfully obtain significant payments from bankrupt individuals who have attempted to hide behind bankruptcy protection after improperly dissipating and fraudulently transferring assets to friends, family and business partners
- Michael uses the voting procedures in consumer and business proposals to increase payables to creditors, and has successfully litigated Court approval of proposals to increase recovery to creditors
- written extensively and given seminars explaining the operation and effectiveness of the 'transfer at undervalue' section (96) of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act of Canada