The Court considered whether to order the production of documents and Questioning of third parties under Rules 5.11, 5.13, and 5.18. One of the Defendants, Wood Group Canada Inc. (“Wood Group”), sought records from the Plaintiff, CNOOC Petroleum North America ULC (“CNOOC Canada”) and its affiliated entities, arguing that these records were relevant and material to assessing the reasonableness of CNOOC Canada’s claim for damages after a pipeline failure. Under Rule 5.11, Wood Group claimed CNOOC Canada controlled these records because of the close ties between the affiliated companies. The Court rejected this, finding no sufficient evidence that CNOOC Canada actually controlled the records or that the corporate veil should be pierced. Audit rights in contracts did not create control over records for discovery purposes.

Under Rule 5.13, which governs production of records from non-parties, the Court emphasized that Wood Group’s request was overly broad and lacked sufficient particularization. The Application was seen as an inappropriate fishing expedition rather than a targeted request for known documents. The Court reiterated that Rule 5.13 should not be used to compel third-party discovery on vague or general claims about potential documents. The requested records needed to be more clearly identified, and the Application failed to meet that standard.

Regarding Rule 5.18, which allows questioning of persons providing services to a corporation when certain conditions are met, Associate Chief Justice Nixon found that the affiliated entities were not akin to near-employees of CNOOC Canada. Wood Group did not provide sufficient evidence that justified treating these entities as near-employees for discovery purposes. The Court concluded that granting the Application would lead to a disproportionate and unnecessary expansion of pre-Trial discovery, contrary to the principles of the Rules. All Applications under Rules 5.11, 5.13, and 5.18 were dismissed.