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
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