Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Dispute arises from a falling-out among university friends over a start-up private equity business, with the plaintiff alleging he was pushed out by the corporate director.
• Core procedural issue concerns how Rule 31.05.1(1) of the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure applies to multiple defendants who are effectively identical in interest.
• Defendants sought to compel the plaintiff to submit to a total of 21 hours of examination for discovery (7 hours per defendant), after already examining him for 5.3 hours.
• Plaintiff argued that the defendants collectively were limited to 7 hours, but was prepared to agree to a total of 9 hours of examination as a compromise.
• The court emphasized proportionality, holding that extensive examinations into 20,000 pages of documents would be disproportionate given the relatively straightforward facts.
• The motion to compel further discovery beyond 9 hours was dismissed, with costs fixed at $3,500 but reserved to the trial judge, leaving the actual payable amount undetermined.

Factual background
A group of friends from university decided to go into business together by working on a start-up company that took the form of a private equity firm. The plaintiff, Devlin Gresdal, was one of these friends and participated in this venture. Over time, however, the relationship deteriorated. The plaintiff alleges that he was effectively pushed out of the enterprise by the key individual in control, the defendant Philip Kaczmarczyk. Kaczmarczyk was the sole director of the two defendant corporations named in the action, 1000116141 Ontario Corporation, Limited Partnership #1, and Limited Partnership #3. The plaintiff claims damages arising from his exclusion from the business and the conduct of Kaczmarczyk, and he has sued Kaczmarczyk personally as well as the associated corporate and partnership entities. Although there are three defendants on paper, they share the same defence and are aligned in interest.

Procedural posture and discovery dispute
The matter came before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice as a short motion concerning discovery, not as a trial on the merits of the underlying business dispute. The defendants brought a motion to compel the plaintiff to complete his examination for discovery. They had already examined the plaintiff for 5.3 hours before adjourning without scheduling a continuation date. Defence counsel took the position that, because there were three defendants, they were entitled to a total of 21 hours of examination time—7 hours per defendant—pursuant to Rule 31.05.1(1) of the Rules of Civil Procedure. The plaintiff resisted this interpretation. He submitted that the defendants collectively had only a right to 7 hours of examination time in total without consent or leave of the court, though he was prepared to be examined for a total of 9 hours as a reasonable accommodation. Thus, the motion largely turned on how to interpret and apply the discovery time-limit rule in the context of multiple defendants who are, in substance, a single interest group.

Legal framework under Rule 31.05.1(1)
Rule 31.05.1(1) provides that, subject to certain exceptions, no party shall exceed seven hours of examinations for discovery of any other party. On its face, this language suggests a cap of seven hours per examining party. The defendants argued for a literal, mechanical application of this rule: because there were three defendants, each should be entitled to up to seven hours, for a maximum of 21 hours of examination of the plaintiff. The court accepted that, prima facie, seven hours per defendant could be read that way. However, Justice Ramsay rejected the notion that the Rule was intended to operate mechanically in every case without regard to the realities of the litigation. Here, the defendants were identical in interest, had filed a joint statement of defence, were represented by the same lawyer, and stood or fell together on the merits. The judge observed that in such circumstances, treating each as independently entitled to seven hours would be formalistic and disconnected from the underlying purpose of the Rule. Justice Ramsay also addressed the plaintiff’s argument that the three defendants collectively were limited to a total of seven hours without consent or leave. The court declined to accept that strict reading as well. Instead, the judge emphasized that the phrase “no party … shall exceed” sets an upper limit, implying that the entitlement can be less than seven hours depending on what is proportionate and reasonable in the circumstances. Ultimately, the question was framed not as a rigid entitlement but as an exercise in proportionality, guided by subrule (2) and its considerations.

Distinguishing prior authorities and emphasizing proportionality
Defence counsel relied on earlier cases such as Osprey Capital Partners v. Gennium Pharma Inc., Frances v. TTC, and Gorun v. Overland, which had taken a more generous view of multiple parties’ entitlement to discovery time. Justice Ramsay distinguished those decisions on the basis that they involved genuinely separate parties with distinct interests, unlike the present case where the three defendants were separate largely in a technical or nominal sense. The judge also referred to Norland Farms (Algoma) Ltd. v. Co-Operators General Insurance Company, in which Cullen J. had acknowledged a similar argument about discovery hours but considered its implications absurd in certain contexts. While time constraints on the short motions list did not permit an exhaustive analysis of all jurisprudence, the court made clear that discovery length must remain anchored in the principle of proportionality. On the facts here, the dispute was not complex enough to justify a massive discovery effort. There were approximately 20,000 pages of documents in the record, but the court held that it would be disproportionate to require the plaintiff to be examined on all of them. In light of the relative simplicity of the factual issues and the unified nature of the defendants’ interests, the court concluded that the 9 hours proposed by the plaintiff would be sufficient to reasonably canvass the issues.

Outcome of the motion and treatment of costs
Justice Ramsay ultimately dismissed the defendants’ motion to compel further discovery on the expansive terms they sought. The court held that the amount of examination time reasonably required in the circumstances was “no more than the 9 hours” the plaintiff had already agreed to provide. By dismissing the motion, the court effectively endorsed the plaintiff’s position that the examinations must remain bounded by proportionality and that a multi-defendant configuration with identical interests does not automatically multiply discovery hours by the number of named parties. On the question of costs, the court fixed the costs of the motion at $3,500, reflecting what it considered an appropriate quantum given the nature of the dispute. However, instead of immediately ordering those costs payable by one side to the other, the judge reserved them to the trial judge. This means that while the figure of $3,500 has been set, the actual entitlement to and payment of those costs will be determined later, likely in conjunction with the ultimate disposition of the action at trial. As a result, the successful party on this motion is the plaintiff, Devlin Gresdal, but no definitive monetary award or costs payment has yet been ordered in his favor; the only specified amount—$3,500 in motion costs—remains contingent and cannot yet be treated as a final, enforceable award.