During a family law trial to determine the parties' date of separation, the respondent sought to admit two emails sent by the applicant in 2004 and 2005.
The emails were recovered from an old company computer hard drive stored at the respondent's home.
The applicant opposed admission, arguing the emails were surreptitiously obtained and violated his expectation of privacy.
The court applied the three-part test for admissibility and admitted the emails, finding they were highly relevant to the separation date, the applicant had a reduced expectation of privacy in the abandoned company computer, and the probative value outweighed any prejudicial effect.
