Sometimes you Can Compare Apples to Oranges

The Ontario Superior Court recently held that $1 million to conduct a document review is not, per se, unreasonable. In Ernst & Young Inc. v. Essar Global Fund Limited et. al. the Defendants argued that they should not be responsible for paying the Plaintiff’s document review costs because their own review costs were significantly less.
 
Justice Newbould, however, disagreed. He suggested that an apples to apples comparison was not appropriate in the circumstances. He stated that “[a] comparison of numbers alone does not permit a conclusion that the expense incurred by Algoma … was an unreasonable expense”.
 
While we often budget for document review of our own client’s records…. beware – the buck doesn’t necessarily stop at the end of your own document review.​