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ARTICLE · 23 SEPTEMBER 2016

No Waiver Of Privilege For Contractor Emails On Company Account

McCarthy Tétrault
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Can a company which provides a corporate e-mail account to a contractor, and then gets into a legal dispute with that contractor, use the contractor's emails in that corporate account in the litigation? The answer appears to be no, in certain circumstances.

CanadaLitigation, Mediation & Arbitration
Dan Doliner
Dan Doliner
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Can a company which provides a corporate e-mail account to a contractor, and then gets into a legal dispute with that contractor, use the contractor's emails in that corporate account in the litigation? The answer appears to be no, in certain circumstances.

The Facts

A company engaged a contractor who provided it with certain services, and in this context, the company provided the contractor a corporate e-mail account. The contractor used this corporate e-mail account to exchange e-mails with his lawyer about a legal dispute he had with the company. Can the company use these e-mails in the litigation with the contractor? This is the main question in a recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, in Narusis v. Bullion Management Group, 2016 ONSC 4731 .

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