Universal Sales, Limited v. Edinburgh Assurance Co. Ltd., 2009 FC 151 (CanLII)

  • February 12, 2009

Date: 2009-02-12 Docket: T-1148-01. Russell J. | Link

A motion to appeal and reverse the decision of the prothonotary concluding that a document inadvertently released was privileged and had to be returned to the plaintiff. "As the Plaintiffs point out, the mere physical loss of custody of a privileged document does not automatically end privilege, especially in the context of modern litigation where large quantities of documents, such as the electronic production of a CD in this case, are exchanged between counsel and accidental disclosure is bound to occur from time to time. In this case, there was neither knowledge on the part of the Plaintiffs when the CD was produced to the Defendants, nor any silence when the Plaintiffs learned of the inadvertent disclosure at the discovery." (paras 28-29)