AMCO Farms: the order left out what the endorsement granted

AMCO Farms Inc. and AMCO Produce Inc. are past the interesting part of their CCAA. The business has been sold, the proceeds are in the monitor's trust account, and a claims procedure has been running since January.

What remains is administration, and on May 29 Justice Cavanagh granted a stay extension to November 30, 2026 to finish it, per Endorsement of Justice Cavanagh, May 29, 2026, paras. 1, 3 and Stay Extension Order, May 29, 2026.

Buried in the relief is a correction worth the attention of anyone who has ever settled a form of order.

What the judge said, and what the order said

On January 23, 2026, the applicants obtained a claims procedure order and a stay extension. Among the relief they had sought at that time was authorisation for the monitor to establish an estate bank account.

Justice Black's endorsement on that motion records that he was "satisfied that the proposed estate account to be opened by the Monitor is necessary to permit the payment of dividends", per Endorsement of Justice Black, January 23, 2026.

And then, in Justice Cavanagh's words:

The Claims Procedure Order, however, omitted relief related to the Estate Bank Account. The proposed Stay Extension Order corrects this omission by retroactively authorizing the Monitor to establish the Estate Bank Account.

Per Endorsement, May 29, 2026, para. 7 and Claims Procedure Order, January 23, 2026.

This is the gap between a decision and its instrument. In Commercial List practice a judge hears a motion, gives an endorsement, and counsel then upload a form of order reflecting it. The endorsement is the reasoning; the order is the authority. A court officer acts under the order, and a bank, a taxing authority or a claimant asked to rely on the officer's mandate reads the order, not the endorsement.

Here the judge decided the point and said so, and the paragraph did not make it into the order. The monitor has been operating an estate account for four months on the strength of a reason rather than an authorisation — hence the request to authorise it nunc pro tunc, per Endorsement, May 29, 2026, para. 1(b).

The practical lesson is narrow and worth stating: when the endorsement grants relief the draft order was meant to carry, check the relief is in the order before it is issued. And when it is not, the fix is a later order with retroactive effect, not an argument that the endorsement was enough.

Why a separate account was needed at all

The reasons the account had to exist are more interesting than the omission.

First, an external event: the account was required to satisfy RBC's demand to close the applicants' bank account, per Endorsement, May 29, 2026, para. 6.

A bank that no longer wishes to hold the account of an insolvent customer is not obliged to keep it open. When it closes, a company that still has to receive tax refunds, rebates and residual payments has nowhere to receive them.

Second, a structural limitation: the monitor's general trust account, which is where the balance of the sale proceeds is being held, cannot pay dividends to claimants, per Endorsement, May 29, 2026, para. 6.

That constraint catches people out. A monitor's pooled trust account holds funds for many engagements; a distribution to proven claimants in one estate has to run out of an account dedicated to that estate. If the claims procedure is going to end in a dividend, the account has to be opened before the dividend, not when it is declared.

Together those two facts explain the whole design: an estate bank account in the name of AMCO Farms' estate, into which everything owing to the company flows and out of which claimants are eventually paid.