Case information

Securities – Prohibited conduct – Insider tipping – Insider trading – Evidence – Divisional Court confirming tribunal decision finding applicant engaged in tipping and insider trading – Whether reviewing courts can afford deference to specialized tribunals if the reasonableness standard is rebutted – If so, which aspects of their decisions may warrant deference? – What is required of defendants and adjudicators when, respectively, advancing and considering reasonable alternatives to guilt in the civil and regulatory contexts? – How should adjudicators resolve conflicts where evidence constitutes both bad character evidence and narrative evidence? – Whether triers of fact are permitted to draw inferences from other inferences – If so, whether those inferences can be drawn if the evidence in the record is purely circumstantial? – Securities Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. S.5, s. 76.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

The staff of the respondent, Ontario Securities Commission (“OSC”), brought a case to the Ontario Capital Markets Tribunal (“tribunal”) alleging that the applicant, Donald Alexander (Sandy) Goss, was tipped by his colleague with insider information (material non-public information (“MNPI”)) relating to a proposed acquisition of the PokerStars brand by the publicly traded company Amaya Gaming Group Inc. (“Amaya”), and that he subsequently bought Amaya shares based on that tip. The tribunal relied on the circumstantial evidence presented by the OSC to conclude, on a balance of probabilities, that Mr. Goss was tipped with MNPI and breached the Securities Act by engaging in insider trading, by tipping his assistant, and by engaging in conduct abusive of the capital markets by recommending Amaya to 15 of his clients. On appeal, the Divisional Court found no reversible errors with respect to the tribunal’s conclusion. It dismissed his appeal. The Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed his motion for leave to appeal.