Date: 2009-09-01. Ball J. | Link

In an application for injunctive relief in a breach of fiduciary duty and misuse of confidential information by former employees, the plaintiff seeks, among other things, an order for preservation and production of information. In para 50, the court states that the plaintiffs did try to recover information from the laptops used by the former employees, but the critical documents on the disks had disappeared and there was a disk-wiping utility on all the laptops, according to the forensic company FDR.  In para 87, the court confirms the parties were obligated to take "reasonable and good faith steps to preserve and disclose relevant electronically stored documents. If deleted or residual documents may be relevant, that information must be communicated to the other party early to mitigate the consequences of potential claims of spoliation". In para 88, the court then extracts language from Practice Direction 6, E-Discovery Guidelines, that came into effect September 1, 2009. The Guidelines require parties to confer early and throughout the proceedings. The court therefore declines to make the order until the conferences have taken place.