This matter involved the termination of an employee and allegations of bad faith against the former employer. The plaintiff argued that e-mails between 8 identified principals of the employer which mentioned his name should be produced. In answering an undertaking, the defendant searched the e-mails of those 8 principals for the plaintiff's name, resulting in 25,000 hits. The defendant produced 27 of those e-mails, while the plaintiff wanted all 25,000.
Master Sproat dismissed the motion and awarded $1500 in costs to the defendant. The Master held that the rules and principles applicable to electronic discovery did not apply since all of the documents in dispute could be printed in hard copy.
The Master also held that there was no evidence that the defendant had failed to disclose any relevant documents. Just because there were 25,000 hits, it did not mean that any documents had been improperly withheld. There were no gaps in the documents and no evidence that any relevant documents were missing. The Master distinguished Vector Transportation Services Inc. v. Traffic Tech Inc. et al, [unreported, March 17, 2008] Ont. SC per Perrell J. on the facts since in that case there was affidavit evidence that documents were missing and had been deleted.
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