Date:  2009-7-10 Cullity J. | Link

In his decision to grant in part a motion to compel answers to numerous questions, the court weighed various factors in concluding which answers to compel, and that the party demanding the answers should pay the costs of the expert required to answer them. The court quotes with approval Master MacLeod's January 21, 2008 decision in Yvonne Andersen v. St Jude Medical (Court File No.: 00 - CV - 195906 CP)., "Of course discovery remains a court supervised process in which the Rules provide the default position or starting point. The court has discretion to either expand or restrict discovery and production in appropriate cases. At the risk of over generalising, it is fair to say that discovery will be expanded if necessary to gain access to critical and probative evidence and it will be restricted if technical application of the rules will result in onerous and expensive production out of all proportion to the particular issue. In the case of electronic data, a liberal dose of collaboration and common sense may go a long way." The court also quotes Master MacLeod's 2003 decision in 1176560 Ontario Limited v. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Company of Canada Ltd (captured in this digest).