U.S. Court Shifts eDiscovery Costs to Plaintiff

Candice Chan-Glasgow, Director, Review Services and Counsel

August 28, 2020

In a rare cost shifting order out of the United States, Lawson v. Spirit Aerosystems (D. Kan. June 18, 2020), the Kansas District Court granted defendant, Spirit Aerosystems, Inc’s motion to shift the costs of a technology-assisted review to the plaintiff, Larry A. Lawson. This case is a helpful reminder to litigants that the eDiscovery process must be proportionate to the needs of the case and that pursuing unnecessarily broad requests can lead to cost consequences.

Lawson is Spirit’s former CEO who retired on July 31, 2016. … Read More

Court of Appeal Weighs-in on Relevance and Privilege

Candice Chan-Glasgow, Director, Review Services and Counsel

August 20, 2020

A recent Court of Appeal of Alberta decision, Tolton v Tolton, 2020 ABCA 218, provides a helpful reminder on the law of relevance and waiver of privilege.

Betty Tolton and Elwood Tolton separated in 1990, and Betty filed for divorce in 2002. The Toltons entered into minutes of settlement in 2007 which contained a provision indicating that Elwood was required to disclose further information related to a dispute about certain assets and accounts receivable. In 2008, Betty filed an application seeking disclosure of the items listed in the minutes of settlement. … Read More

Please vote – we’ve been nominated again!

We are pleased to announce that we have been nominated again for two Canadian Lawyer Readers’ Choice Awards.

This year we have been nominated as the best in:

Litigation Support and E-Discovery Consultants
Legal Process Outsourcing / Document Review Services

This is the sixth year Canadian Lawyer has run their Readers’ Choice Awards. The program is designed to give a voice to their readers to identify which vendors and suppliers are the best at what they do.

Voting is open until August 21st and winners will be unveiled in the November 20, 2020 issue of Canadian Lawyer.… Read More

Meaningful Disclosure

Candice Chan-Glasgow, Director, Review Services and Counsel

August 7, 2020

In a decision released last month, R. v. Cuffie, 2020 ONSC 4488 (CanLII), the Ontario Superior Court of Justice considered whether the Crown’s disclosure of non-searchable PDFs constitutes “meaningful” disclosure.

The Crown provided disclosure in nine tranches, and each tranche of disclosure was accompanied by a spreadsheet which functioned as a table of contents. The spreadsheet listed the file name of every item disclosed, the folder in which the file was located, and the date the item was disclosed. Approximately 7,000 “written documents” (over 318,600 pages) were disclosed, in addition to over 9,000 audio files, videos, and photographs. … Read More

Heuristica Proposes Better Disclosure Rules for Construction Arbitration

Despite some initial trepidation, lawyers arbitrating construction cases by teleconference have found the “new normal” to be efficient and cost effective. But the inconveniences associated with face-to-face arbitrations are minuscule compared to the costs and risks associated with the document disclosure process. We need a “new normal” way to request and produce relevant documents in a virtual process.

It’s time to consider a standard, simplified disclosure rule that takes advantage of available technology to improve the outcomes of construction arbitration.

In our experience, many of the pain points associated with the exchange of documents could have been avoided had the parties adopted a mutually agreeable framework at the outset of a matter, and prior to the review and exchange of productions.… Read More