YSL Residences: the trustee said it was not an adversary

Maria Athanasoulis says she was promised twenty per cent of the profits on the YSL Project. The oral agreement she relies on is now five years and three levels of court away from where it started, and on June 30, 2026 the proposal trustee valued the claim arising from it at zero, per YG Limited Partnership and YSL Residences Inc. (Re), 2026 ONSC 4566, paras. 2, 8.

Her appeal of that valuation is set for October 21, 2026. This endorsement is about what she gets to see before it.

How a disallowed claim became a valuation

Ms. Athanasoulis filed two unsecured claims: $1 million for wrongful (constructive) dismissal, and $18 million for breach of an oral agreement entitling her to 20% of the profits on the project.

The trustee accepted the dismissal claim at $880,000.39 on March 30, 2023, and that has never been challenged. On August 10, 2023, it disallowed the profit-share claim in full, per 2026 ONSC 4566, paras. 2–3.

She appealed under the BIA. The appeal was heard in December 2023 and allowed on March 19, 2024; the disallowance was set aside. That decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeal in 2025, and the Supreme Court refused leave, per 2026 ONSC 4566, para. 4.

The result is that the profit-share claim has been finally determined to be a provable claim under s. 121 of the BIA — one the trustee is obliged to determine and value, per 2026 ONSC 4566, para. 5.

In November 2025 the court approved a bespoke procedure for doing that: she would file a revised proof of claim with a comprehensive record including expert evidence; the trustee would determine the claim on that record, advising if it needed expert assistance or further materials; it would deliver its determination under s. 135; and she could then decide whether to appeal. All evidence was to come by affidavit or out-of-court examination, and she had the right to cross-examine every witness, per 2026 ONSC 4566, paras. 6–8.

She revised the claim upward, from $18 million to $25 million. The trustee valued it at zero, in a 65-page report containing over 300 citations to the evidentiary record, per 2026 ONSC 4566, paras. 8, 14, 40.

The competing valuations

Her position rests on an appraisal CBRE prepared in July 2019, which used the Land Residual Approach to value the YSL Project at $375 million as at December 31, 2019. After receiving the trustee's expert reports she filed a further report from an expert at Cushman & Wakefield who agreed with that approach.

The trustee's valuation rests largely on two experts it retained, Mr. Linds and Mr. Finnegan, whose reports are dated March 2, 2026, per 2026 ONSC 4566, paras. 9–10.

So the case turns on methodology, and methodology is where discretionary and subjective judgements live.

What she asked for, and what she was told

Ms. Athanasoulis moved for production of the correspondence between the trustee's experts and the trustee and its counsel — factual information and assumptions provided to them, draft reports, comments on those drafts, and communications about her materials, the cross-examinations and the valuation. She also sought answers to specific undertakings refused on the cross-examinations of Mr. Linds on May 6 and Mr. Finnegan on May 5, 2026, per 2026 ONSC 4566, para. 11.

The refusals are reproduced in the endorsement, and they repeat one formula. Asked what was discussed at meetings about the mandate for the appraisal report; asked whether the valuation number in the first draft matched the final; asked what was discussed at a meeting to prepare Mr. Linds for cross-examination; asked to produce emails between the two experts — each was refused on the basis that the trustee's communications with its experts are not relevant to the determination, coupled with a without-prejudice assurance that the trustee had instructed the experts that it had no interest in the outcome and they should give their unbiased opinion, and an objection that review and production would not be proportionate, per 2026 ONSC 4566, paras. 45–47.

The trustee also took the unusual step of swearing an affidavit affirming its impartiality, and its representative testified on cross-examination that any comments it gave on the experts' reports were "not factual or substantive" but clarifying, per 2026 ONSC 4566, para. 15.

The position that decided it

There is no claim of privilege in this case, and the endorsement explains why in a sentence that practitioners should read twice:

It is agreed that there is, and can be, no claim for privilege asserted by the Trustee over the requested, or any other, communications. This is because the Trustee insists that it is not an adversary to Ms. Athanasoulis in the context of this ongoing process; rather it is the investigator and decision-maker.

per 2026 ONSC 4566, para. 20.