Civil Practice and Procedure – Discovery - Discovery of documents
Plaintiff was lawyer and defendant was business which provided private investigator services. Action arose in relation to surveillance of plaintiff conduct by defendant, who was hired by plaintiff’s former spouse during divorce proceedings. Plaintiff claimed defendant took photographs or video of inside of his home or that of other related family members, which were then disseminated to third parties without his consent. Defendant had not produced investigative report, maintaining that under rule 30.02(2) of Rules of Civil Procedure it was not required to produce report because it was privileged document. Plaintiff brought motion for order requiring defendant to produce copy of report with videotape surveillance of plaintiff together with investigate report . Motion granted. Defendant did not establish that investigative report was protected from disclosure by common law privilege. Third criteria of Wigmore test was not met . When report was originally made, non-party spouse may have believed any information gathered by defendant would not be disclosed to plaintiff because it could attract litigation privilege but this did not equate it with being communication that originated in confidence . Value of private investigator-client relationship was often based on gathering of highly personal information about someone else. However, this relationship did not to level of providing public good in same way as relationships recognized in case law and it cannot be said that community had interest in maintaining confidentiality of relationship.
Camporese v. Bay Area Investigations (2019), 2019 CarswellOnt 1746, 2019 ONSC 962, A.J. Goodman J. (Ont. S.C.J.).
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