Developed over a period of some six years by teachers of the subject at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, this book provides the first comprehensive and integrated teaching tool for the very basic field of debtor and creditor relations.

The carefully designed text considers first the nature of the credit market and the setting in which debtor-creditor relations are formed. It proceeds to examine self-help collection, execution, garnishment, reviewable transactions, and bankruptcy. Other sections consider the rights of various special creditors (including government creditors and mechanics’ lien claimants), and proposals for comprehensive reform of the debt collection process.

The authors attempt to deal with law from a national perspective. While considering in detail the statutory provisions relevant to debtor-creditor relations in Ontario, they also treat significant legislation of other provinces and examine the suitability of differing responses to similar legal issues. Their book should as well be welcomed as the first attempt to treat in detail the current proposals for reform of federal bankruptcy legislation. The authors have accepted the distinct probability that the draft legislation pending before Parliament will be enacted, and have considered the significance of these proposals in the light of the existing law.

Throughout the book are extensive introductory notes, explanatory notes, questions and problems; a set of review problems concludes the text. The authors have attempted to make it unnecessary to provide detailed background in lectures. The materials have been designed both to guide the students easily through the technical areas of debtor-creditor relations and to highlight the more interesting issues that arise from legislation.

Michael Trebilcock holds the Chair in Law and Economics in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.

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B.J. Reiter teaches debtor-creditor and contracts and real estate law at the University of Toronto and is a consultant to the Ontario Law Reform Commission Study on the Enforcement of Judgment Debts.

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J.B. Laskin also teaches debtor-creditor law at the University of Toronto. He and Professor Reiter are currently preparing a major working paper for the Ontario Law Reform Commission Study on the Enforcement of Judgement Debts.

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