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w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m J U N E / J U L Y 2 0 1 8 9 A former U.S. congressman has lost his US$450-million claim against a Hamilton, Ont. lawyer after a judge ruled he waited too long to bring his case in Ontario. Alan Grayson, who was the Democrat member of the U.S. House of Repre- sentatives for Florida's 9th district until January 2017, obtained a US$150-million judgment through his company Grayson Consulting against Clifford Lloyd and a few other parties in South Carolina in 2014, according to the judgment in Gray- son Consulting Inc. v. Lloyd. The American judge trebled the dam- ages, a remedy available under certain cir- cumstances in South Carolinian courts. But acting for himself, Lloyd, who has lived and practised law in Hamilton since 1991, convinced Ontario Superior Court Justice James Diamond that the limitation period expired in late 2016, more than a year before Grayson commenced the claim in December 2017. "I thought it was the right decision," Lloyd says. "I'm tired of this case, which comes from a company I left 18 years ago. Frankly, I'm exhausted and somewhat sur- prised that this can still occur. "It does remind me of Bleak House," he adds, referring to the famously endless case in the Charles Dickens classic, which even got a mention from a U.S. judge in one of the decisions in Lloyd's case. Gregory Sidlofsky, a partner at litiga- tion-focused Toronto firm Wagner Sidlof- sky LLP, acted for Grayson Consulting, and he says his client has appealed Diamond's decision. "We were hoping that the court would approach the enforcement of a judgment from multi-party foreign litigation a little differently, giving the party seeking to enforce the judgment a little more leeway when the underlying litigation is still pro- ceeding in the foreign jurisdiction," Sidlof- sky says. According to a statement of claim filed with the court in Ontario, Grayson alleges that he was the victim of a Ponzi scheme in which Lloyd played a key role. None of the allegations in the claim has been proved, and Lloyd's statement of defence strongly denies Grayson's claims. Grayson's company alleges it lost mil- lions engaging in what it thought were stock loans from a company named Derivium Capital, only to find out later that its collateral, publicly traded securities, had been secretly sold off to fund loans to other borrowers. The congressman's company alleges in its claim that Lloyd was a founder of Derivium and that he received $5.5 million \ AT L A N T I C \ C E N T R A L \ N O RT H \ W E S T REGIONAL WRAP-UP U.S. CONGRESSMAN LOSES CLAIM AGAINST ONTARIO LAWYER Continued on page 10 DON'T JUST PRACTICE LAW, MASTER IT. OSGOODE'S PART-TIME PROFESSIONAL LLM IN PRIVACY & CYBERSECURITY Launching Canada's premier LLM in Privacy and Cybersecurity Law. This Professional LLM gives you the legal knowledge and skills required to protect information privacy as new technologies and new institutional practices emerge. Start in January 2019 Canada's leading Professional LLM for lawyers, executives and experienced professionals Learn more about your options at osgoodepd.ca/cdnlawyer Nick Wright, JD, MBA, LLM Principal, Wright Business Law Courses Include: • Privacy Law in Canada • Internet Censorship & Global Security • The Law of Confidential Information • Information Technology and Privacy in Health Law • Special Topics in Laws Governing Data Use and Data Disclosure • Privacy & Data Security from a Legal, Business and Technology Perspective Outside Toronto? Most streams can be completed remotely. ntitled-6 1 2018-05-25 11:40 AM

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