Developers of Toronto’s five-star Trump International Hotel & Tower “misrepresented” how much investors could make buying and renting out its novel hotel-condo suites because it was the only way they could sell the overpriced units, a court was told Thursday.

Sales and senior executives with the rookie builder of the project, Talon International, have long maintained they weren’t marketing the units as investments, but rather as upscale real estate in the heart of the city.

But potential buyers were given detailed financial statements - tailored to their unit - promising hefty returns based on room rates and occupancy levels that were grossly overstated, Mitchell Wine, the lawyer for 24 plaintiffs trying to renege on deals, told an Ontario Superior Court Justice.

It was the first of two days of motions for summary judgment before Mr. Justice Paul Perell, a legal route aimed at fast-tracking lawsuits, where appropriate, to avoid a lengthy and costly trial.

Two plaintiffs will serve as test cases for 22 others, all of whom paid more than $800,000 for Trump hotel-condo units based on profit projections. Instead, buyers racked up tens of thousands in debt thanks to depressed room rates, lower than expected occupancy rates and a host of unexpected monthly charges.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages between $200,000 and $1 million, based on their losses and cancellation of the deals.

Many were naïve, first-time investors who barely spoke English or borrowed money from parents to make down payments on what were, at the time, the priciest condos in the city.

But the worst was to come as the oft-delayed project set to open in February of 2012, about three years behind schedule, court was told.

Talon slapped buyers with five significant new charges just days before they were to take interim occupancy. These included management and reservation fees and a fund for maintaining and replacing furniture that had never been mentioned before buyers finalized deals back in 2006 and 2007, Wine told the court.

International buyers - the 276 hotel-condo units, which averaged more than $800,000, were heavily marketed to Asian and European investors — were also hit with a hefty withholding tax that wiped out any possibility of making a profit, let alone the big returns touted by Talon sales officials, Wine told the court.

“The evidence of misrepresentation is overwhelming,” in sales materials said Wine, noting that from the day the hotel complex opened in early 2012 “these things hemorrhaged money.”

Key to the case will be a 2004 Ontario Securities Commission ruling, which set out strict parameters under which Talon was allowed to sell the units. The commission ruled that Talon would be exempted from basic regulatory requirements, such as undergoing an independent review of its business plan, on condition it not market the units as investments.

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Talon violated those conditions almost immediately, Wine told the court.

That’s because executives knew that “no self-respecting auditor would look at these things more than three minutes without severe, severe reservations.”