Court finds proportionality does not justify costly forensic review of more than 10 million records
The British Columbia Supreme Court has dismissed an application seeking further document production in a civil sexual assault lawsuit, finding that the likely evidentiary value of additional searches did not justify the substantial costs of further forensic work.
In Szabo v. Faris, 2026 BCSC 1862, the plaintiff alleged that a deceased defendant repeatedly sexually assaulted him between 2011 and 2020. The plaintiff alleged that the assaults began when he was 11 and continued while he lived with the deceased defendant and his parents.
The defendants denied the allegations and maintained that the plaintiff fabricated them for financial gain.
After the plaintiff made a statement in February 2021, the RCMP seized computers and electronic devices belonging to, or possessed by, the deceased defendant. A November 2022 consent order required the defendants' solicitor to review the devices and produce relevant documents.
The devices contained more than 10 million documents or electronic artifacts. The estate retained a forensic technology firm to transfer the data onto a hard drive for approximately $24,000.
The estate later produced about 37 additional documents after the plaintiff's counsel demanded them. However, the plaintiff sought further searches, citing more than 27,000 potentially relevant documents identified through keyword searches and a text fragment concerning the alleged sexual abuse that the estate had not disclosed.
The estate's counsel acknowledged that the fragment should have been produced but could not explain why the searches had not identified it.
The BC Supreme Court found that broad single-word searches generating thousands of results did not establish that additional relevant documents remained undisclosed.
Citing Trigon Pacific Terminals Limited v. Prince Rupert Port Authority, 2025 BCCA 155, the court emphasized that proportionality informs judicial discretion over document production.
Although further searches might uncover relevant documents, the court found that the amounts of money likely at issue and the diminished likelihood of finding evidence with significant probative value did not justify extensive additional forensic work.
The court concluded that the plaintiff had not established that the defendants' counsel failed to meet their obligations under the consent order. It also rejected requests for specific categories of documents, finding no persuasive evidence that additional responsive documents existed and had not been produced.
The court declined to order a further document list from the two surviving individual defendants. It also refused to require verifying affidavits, finding that the single identified omission did not warrant such an order given the volume of records and the absence of evidence of deliberate or wilfully indifferent withholding. Ultimately, the court dismissed the application.
