Bronson Consulting Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), [2019] O.J. No. 6142
Bronson Consulting lost a $200M Visa call center tender contract. Bronson set out to investigate the tender process. Bronson issued summons to various consulting firms which had participated in the tender. Bronson had not sued these particular parties, so Bronson was moving under rule 39.03 (examination of non-parties).
This is not a heavily travelled section of the Rules. But even so, Bronson took the corners too sharply. They served the summons on April 9th for an April 12th examination. Bronson did not include the pleadings in their summons so how was the non-party to know what the matter related to? Bronson wrongly expected the non-parties to bring an affidavit of documents with them (affidavits of documents are only required from parties, not non-parties).
Corthorn J. set aside the summons as an abuse of process (while allowing Bronson to re-serve in a civilized manner).
