Ontario’s New eDiscovery Rules

The revised Rules of Civil Procedure in Ontario Canada now includes Rule 29.2, the proportionality doctrine which states that the right to conduct discovery must be weighed against the time, expense and undue burden the producing party bears. This new rule sounds a great deal like the U.S. FRCP Rule 26(b)(2). The U.S. rule says that information is relevant and discoverable if there is any possibility it may be relevant to the claim. The new Canadian rules say that only information that is truly relevant in the case must be disclosed. The concept is to figure out what ESI is really relevant to the case instead of requiring production of all ESI that could be relevant to the case.

The primary elements of the new Canadian rules: (from Inside Counsel, January 2010)

• The scope of discovery has been changed from requiring parties to produce ESI “relating to any matter in issue”, to a narrower standard of being “relevant to any matter in issue”.
• A new proportionality rule authorizes courts to limit discovery where its cost is disproportionate to what is at stake in litigation.
• Parties must agree to a discovery plan which sets out the scope of the discovery

A good source of information on these new rules can be found here.

Tags: e-discovery, eDiscovery, electronic discovery, ESI, FRCP, Ontario, proportionality, rule 29.2, Rules of Civil Procedure

Written on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 and filed under Bill Tolson, eDiscovery.
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