Paul Broad and I published the first 2008 edition of the Hicks Information & Privacy Post. Here is our short lead editorial, “Canadian e-discovery enters next era.”
We’re happy to be back with our second year of the Hicks Information & Privacy Post – our quarterly newsletter about case law developments in privacy, access to information, the protection of confidential business information and the law of production.
This year promises to be a transition year for e-discovery in Canada, with the recent launch of the “Sedona Canada Principles” – the Sedona Canada Working Group’s twelve non-binding statements of principle intended to facilitate electronic discovery in Canada.
For those of you unfamiliar with e-discovery, it refers to the production of records in electronic form and is of critical concern to lawyers, individuals and businesses because the cost of locating and producing electronic records can make litigation unaffordable for even large businesses. There are also risks associated with electronic records that further complicate the discovery process.
Together with developing case law, the Sedona Canada Principles will provide authoritative guidance in the resolution of electronic discovery disputes in Canada. The “scope of production” case law we’ve reported on in this issue is already starting to reflect the proportionality concept – a concept embedded into a number of the Principles that demands the time and expense of any proceeding (and the parties’ production efforts) should be proportional to the dispute.
While the signs that the Sedona Canada Principles are having an influence is positive, there is also ample evidence in our newsletter that many Canadian litigants are not yet prepared for the challenges of e-discovery. The problem of raising the burden of electronic production late (and often after a court has already entered a production order) is a feature of five of the cases below, a pattern that shows that parties to litigation are not getting an early grip on production issues and costs themselves, let alone meeting with the other side to discuss those issues as suggested by the Principles. We hope these are simply adjustment pains, to be borne only as long as it takes for the Principles to become well-known and applied. It should be an interesting year!
The full edition is here. Please take a look.
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