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Notes issued by the Chief Justice
1. Practitioners should expect that, with a view to eliminating or reducing the burden of discovery, the Court:
(a) will not order general discovery as a matter of course, even where a consent direction to that effect is submitted;
(b) will fashion any order for discovery to suit the issues in a particular case; and
(c) will expect the following questions to be answered:
(i) is discovery necessary at all, and if so for what purposes?
(ii) can those purposes be achieved:
• by a means less expensive than discovery?
• by discovery only in relation to particular issues?
• by discovery (at least in the first instance - see (iii)) only of defined categories of documents?
(iii) particularly in cases where there are many documents, should discovery be given in stages, e.g. initially on a limited basis, with liberty to apply later for particular discovery or discovery on a broader basis?
(iv) should discovery be given in the list of documents by general description rather than by identification of individual documents?
2. In determining whether to order discovery, the Court will have regard to the issues in the case and the order in which they are likely to be resolved, the resources and circumstances of the parties, the likely cost of the discovery and its likely benefit.
3. To prevent orders for discovery requiring production of more documents than are necessary for the fair conduct of the case, orders for discovery will ordinarily be limited to the documents required to be disclosed by Order 15 rule 2(3).
M E J BLACK
Chief Justice
25 September 2009
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