What Is A Mareva Injunction?

A Mareva injunction is a court order that freezes a person’s or company’s assets to prevent them from hiding or moving money before a judgment is made. It’s named after a famous 1975 English court case and is one of the most powerful tools available in civil litigation.

When you’re suing someone and worry they might transfer their property, empty their bank accounts, or move assets out of the country, a Mareva injunction stops them in their tracks. The court essentially locks down their assets until your case is resolved.

Courts don’t grant these orders easily. You must meet strict requirements.

You Have A Strong Case: You need to show there’s a serious issue to be tried and a good chance you’ll win. The court won’t freeze someone’s assets if your lawsuit appears weak or frivolous.

Risk of Asset Dissipation: You must prove there’s a real risk the defendant will move, hide, sell, or otherwise dispose of assets to avoid paying a judgment. 

Assets Are Available: The defendant must have assets within the court’s jurisdiction that can actually be frozen. 

You’ll Suffer Harm Without It: You need to demonstrate that without the injunction, you won’t be able to collect on your judgment if you win. The potential harm to you must be real and significant.

To prove the risk of asset dissipation, courts consider various factors. Has the defendant moved money recently? Are they transferring property to family members or selling assets quickly? Do they have a history of avoiding creditors or judgments?

Evidence might include bank records showing unusual transfers, property transactions that seem designed to hide assets, threats to move money, or past behavior suggesting the defendant won’t honour a judgment.

A Mareva injunction can freeze bank accounts, real estate, business assets, investment accounts, vehicles, and other valuable property. The injunction doesn’t give you ownership or control of the assets: it simply prevents the defendant from dealing with them. The assets remain theirs, but they can’t sell, transfer, or hide them.

Courts recognize that people need money to live. Mareva injunctions usually include exceptions allowing the defendant to use frozen funds for reasonable living expenses and legal fees. The court sets limits on these amounts to prevent abuse. The defendant can typically pay their mortgage, buy groceries, and cover normal household costs. 

When you request a Mareva injunction, you must promise to compensate the defendant for any losses they suffer if it turns out the injunction was wrongly granted. This is called an undertaking as to damages.

If you lose your lawsuit, the defendant can claim against your undertaking for losses caused by the frozen assets. This might include lost business opportunities, investment losses, or other damages resulting from the freeze.

This requirement ensures people don’t seek Mareva injunctions frivolously. You’re taking financial risk by asking for this powerful remedy.

The process typically starts with an urgent motion to court. Often, these applications are made without notice to the defendant. This prevents them from moving assets the moment they learn you’re seeking to freeze them.

When applying without notice, you have an extra duty to be completely honest with the court. You must disclose all relevant facts, even those that hurt your case. Courts take this duty seriously and will dissolve injunctions obtained through incomplete or misleading information.

If the court grants the injunction, the defendant then has the opportunity to challenge it. They can ask the court to set it aside or modify its terms.

Breaking a Mareva injunction is contempt of court, which can result in fines or even jail time. Courts take these violations seriously because they directly undermine the judicial process.

Third parties who help someone violate a Mareva injunction can also face consequences. Banks, lawyers, or anyone else who assists in moving frozen assets can be held in contempt.

Mareva injunctions can sometimes freeze assets in other countries if those countries will recognize and enforce the Canadian court order. This becomes more complex with international assets, but it’s possible in cases involving significant amounts or sophisticated asset-hiding schemes.

Not every application for a Mareva injunction succeeds. Lamptey v. Suske Capital Inc., 2026 ONSC 4778, is a recent Ontario Superior Court (Commercial List) decision that shows how demanding the test really is, and what happens when the evidence falls short.

A group of investors invested roughly $3.2 million across four senior-living and healthcare projects promoted by Stephen Suske and David Craik through a network of corporations known as the Avenir Group.

The dispute centred on the Avenir Los Angeles Memory Care project, an 88-bed facility. The plaintiffs alleged that Suske and Craik orally promised, at an investor presentation, to personally guarantee their individual investments, and that this promise induced them to invest. The project was ultimately delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, achieved only about 50 percent occupancy, and failed: the first mortgagee took over the property and sold it, with no recovery for the investors.

The plaintiffs sued for civil fraud and sought an interim and interlocutory Mareva injunction freezing the defendants’ worldwide assets. The defendants did not dispute that the plaintiffs, as investors, might have a claim for repayment, but denied any fraudulent scheme and argued the case did not meet the threshold for the extraordinary remedy sought.

Justice Steele dismissed the motion on both grounds.

On the fraud claim, the documentary record, including the offering memorandum, the limited partnership agreement, and the signed subscription agreements, showed that the guarantee ran to the investment fund on specific promissory notes, not directly to individual investors. The plaintiffs had been given these documents before investing, some had obtained independent legal advice, and the subscription agreements expressly stated that investors were relying only on the written disclosure, not oral statements. The court held this was, at most, a sophisticated investment dispute over a project that failed for market reasons, not a strong prima facie case of fraudulent misrepresentation.

On dissipation, the court found no evidence of an intention to place assets beyond the plaintiffs’ reach. There were no vanishing bank accounts, no transfers offshore, and no suspicious pattern of activity. The sale of one defendant’s home was explained by downsizing at age 75; a family trust holding another defendant’s assets had been established years before the dispute arose. The court reaffirmed that a Mareva injunction is “execution before judgment” and requires real evidence that a defendant is arranging their affairs to defeat a future judgment. 

The plaintiffs’ motion was dismissed, with costs of $40,000 awarded against them in favour of one defendant and $90,000 in favour of the remaining defendants.

The case is a useful illustration of both halves of the Mareva test in action. It confirms that courts will scrutinize the actual paper trail in an investment dispute, rather than accept an oral-representation narrative. Moreover, speculation about a defendant’s asset structure is not enough: a plaintiff must point to concrete evidence, such as unexplained transfers or a history of evading creditors. Sophisticated investors who received full disclosure, and had the opportunity to seek legal advice, face a high bar in later characterizing a failed investment as fraud, sufficient to justify freezing a defendant’s worldwide assets.

If you’re concerned about collecting a potential judgment, speak with our litigation lawyers about whether a Mareva injunction is appropriate. We can assess the strength of your case, evaluate the risk of asset dissipation, and guide you through the application process. 

Contact us at 416.901.9984 or info@pintoshekib.ca.