Anyone involved in electronic discovery may be interested in a decision of the Irish Supreme Court in Dome Telecom v Eircom.

The point at issue was whether a party can be required to create a document as part of the discovery / disclosure exercise by extracting and collating electronic data into a report. The majority finding was that, whilst the exercise contemplated in this particular instance was disproportionately onerous, the principle was sound – that is, a party may, in an appropriate case, be made to collate data into a document which did not already exist.

The case is written about in TJ McIntyre’s blog IT Law in Ireland

What would happen on similar facts here? We do not know what it was about the proposed exercise which made it disproportionate to undertake the collation, and the same facts might have produced the same result in an English court. I am sure the finding of principle would be the same – if the collation would have aided the court’s understanding of the issues at a cost which was proportionate to the claim, then the overriding objective would have entitled an English court to require the new document to be made.

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