The legal battle over the Tobermory Lodge has finally come to an end after more than a decade of litigation in the Ontario courts1. This dispute began in the spring of 2012 and involved complex issues including family law proceedings, the appointment of a receiver, and allegations of missing property. In a recent decision released in December 2025, Associate Justice McGraw of the Superior Court of Justice ruled that the case must be dismissed because it had taken too long to move forward. The decision serves as a reminder of the court’s power to end a case when the delay becomes so long that it is no longer fair to the parties involved.
The story of this case begins with John Kraner and his former spouse, who together operated the Tobermory Lodge motel. In May 2012, during the course of their family law proceedings, Mr. Kraner’s former spouse became concerned that assets were being wasted or improperly moved. To protect the business, she obtained a court order appointing Richard Burnside and Associates Limited as the receiver and manager of the property and assets of the Lodge. During this time, the former spouse was represented by a lawyer named John Allen Wilford. The motel was eventually sold on February 25, 2013, as part of those receivership proceedings.
After the sale was finalized, Mr. Kraner alleged that something was wrong. He claimed that kitchen equipment and other fixtures had been improperly removed from the Lodge before the deal closed. Because of these missing items, a numbered company owned by Mr. Kraner, 2027707 Ontario Ltd., filed a lawsuit in September 2013. The company sought more than $316,000 in damages for what the law calls conversion, which is essentially the unauthorized removal of property belonging to another person. They also asked for punitive damages to reflect the seriousness of the alleged conduct.
As the years went by, the lawsuit changed several times. In early 2016, the court stayed the action against the receiver company. Around the same time, Mr. Kraner was personally added as a plaintiff in the case, and Mr. Wilford, the lawyer who had represented the former spouse, was added as a defendant. The allegations grew to include claims of trespass and inducing a breach of fiduciary duty. However, by 2018, the case hit a significant roadblock. The court ordered the numbered company to pay $12,500 as security for legal costs. Rather than paying this amount, the company decided to drop out of the lawsuit, leaving Mr. Kraner as the only person pursuing the claims against the remaining defendants.
Progress remained slow. It was not until December 2019 that Mr. Wilford served his list of documents for the case. By March 2020, just as the global pandemic was beginning, Mr. Wilford asked the court to dismiss the case because of the delay. The court heard that request in August 2020. At that time, a judge did not dismiss the case but instead set a strict timetable. This schedule required that the case be ready and set down for trial by January 28, 2022. This was intended to ensure that the matter reached a conclusion in a reasonable amount of time.
In 2021, the parties finally took some steps to move the case forward. They conducted examinations for discovery, which are meetings where parties answer questions under oath. One of the defendants, John Schnurr, was suffering from serious health issues at the time. His examination was done specifically to preserve his testimony in case he could not attend a trial. Sadly, Mr. Schnurr passed away later that year. Mr. Kraner and Mr. Wilford were also examined in June 2021. The parties even attended a mediation session in early 2022 to see if they could settle the dispute out of court, but those efforts were not successful.
Despite the 2020 court order, the deadline to set the case for trial came and went. Mr. Kraner’s legal team prepared a trial record on January 31, 2022, but they did not actually file it with the court. Over a year later, in September 2023, Mr. Wilford brought another motion to have the case dismissed for delay. In response, Mr. Kraner filed his own motions. He asked the court for a status hearing and requested permission to examine Richard Burnside, the person who had acted as the receiver years earlier. Mr. Kraner argued that he needed more information from Mr. Burnside before the case could proceed to a trial.
The court held a hearing for these competing requests in April 2025. By this point, about nine and a half years had passed since the lawsuit began, and more than twelve years had passed since the events at the Tobermory Lodge took place. Associate Justice McGraw noted that dismissing a case for delay is a very serious step. It stops a person from having their claims decided on the actual facts. However, the judge explained that the court must balance the rights of the plaintiff with the rights of the defendant and the public interest in a fast and efficient legal system.
In his analysis, Justice McGraw looked at whether the delay was inordinate and whether there was a valid excuse for it. He found that a delay of nearly a decade was indeed inordinate. He also found that the reasons provided for the delay were not good enough. For example, Mr. Kraner’s team argued that they were waiting to speak with Mr. Burnside, but the evidence showed they did not even try to contact him until seven months after the trial deadline had already passed. There was also a lack of explanation for why they waited so long to ask for a court order to interview him once he stopped responding to their letters.
A major problem for Mr. Kraner’s position was the lack of evidence. The judge pointed out that there was no direct statement from Mr. Kraner himself explaining why he had not moved faster. Instead, the court only had statements from a lawyer and a law clerk. The law clerk’s statement said that Mr. Kraner always intended to go to trial, but the clerk had not actually spoken to Mr. Kraner about it. The judge found that this was not enough to prove that Mr. Kraner was serious about finishing the case.
The judge also discussed a legal concept known as the presumption of prejudice. This means that when a case takes a very long time, the court assumes the other side is being harmed. This happens because memories fade over a decade, witnesses might move or pass away, and important documents can be lost. Since Mr. Schnurr had already died and many years had passed, the judge felt that a fair trial might no longer be possible. Mr. Kraner had the responsibility to prove that a fair trial could still happen, but he did not provide enough evidence to show that all the necessary documents and witnesses were still available and ready.
In an attempt to save the case, Mr. Kraner’s team filed the trial record in June 2025, several weeks after the motions were argued in court. They also dropped the claims against the late Mr. Schnurr. However, the judge decided that these late actions did not fix the years of inactivity. He noted that the court system cannot tolerate cases that linger in limbo forever. He wrote that fairness requires allowing people to move on with their lives without having a lawsuit hanging over their heads indefinitely.
Ultimately, Associate Justice McGraw ordered that the entire action be dismissed. This means Mr. Kraner cannot continue his pursuit of damages for the kitchen equipment or the other claims related to the Lodge. The judge concluded that even though the law prefers to decide cases on their merits, there comes a time when a delay is simply too great to ignore. The integrity of the civil justice process depends on rules being followed and cases being handled in a timely manner. With this ruling, the long history of the Tobermory Lodge litigation has reached its final conclusion.
