Absent Agreement Discoveries To Take Place At Lawyers Office
Reasons for judgement were released today (Schroeder v. Sweeney) by the BC Supreme Court, Kelowna Registry, addressing a practice point. Where are examinations for discovery to take place if the parties can’t agree? Master McDiarmid ruled that the default is the lawyer’s office of the party being examined. The court provided the following reasons:
[4] Subrule 7-2(11) needs a bit of analysis. It provides, firstly, that you are to find a Registry closest to where the party to be discovered resides in British Columbia and then you are to find a location within 30 kilometres of that registry. It does not say that the discovery is to take place at the registry, although in the past that is where discoveries did take place. All of the larger registries had rooms where examinations for discovery occurred. It is true that often the most convenient location is the place where the court reporters carry on their business.
[5] However, I have always understood the default position (for parties resident in B.C.) to be that if the parties could not agree, the party would be discovered at that party’s counsel’s office.
[6] There are reasons why that is convenient to the party. One reason is that the full documents in the possession of that party will be available. A second is that the party being examined is in a surrounding where that party’s counsel practises and so the party is presumably somewhat more comfortable there.
[7] In responding to this particular application, I reviewed some comments — and not unreasonable comments by the plaintiff, where he deposes basically, that yes, he could go to the court reporter’s office, but he does depose to some issues with parking. That does, to some extent, impact on his convenience. It seems to me though that the — what I am going to call the default provision which was certainly the provision I understood as counsel was that if parties could not agree, the discovery should take place at the office of the counsel representing the party to be discovered. The matter is somewhat of an important practice point.
[8] I am dismissing the application and ordering that the discovery take place at the office of the plaintiff’s counsel. The part of the application that the plaintiff attend Okanagan Court Reporters is dismissed and instead of that, the order is that the plaintiff attend at examination for discovery at the offices of his counsel.