Irish Supreme Court Extends the Scope of Electronic Discovery: Dome Telecom v Eircom

Introduction

In Dome Telecom v. Eircom1 the Irish Supreme Court has given guidance on the power of the courts in relation to electronic discovery and in particular whether the courts may require a party to extract, collate and analyse records from a database and to produce a report containing that information.

Factual background

The plaintiff Dome Telecom was in the business of selling call cards to consumers, which enabled them to make cheap telephone calls from any handset (including mobiles and payphones) by first calling a 1800 freephone number. Calls made to this 1800 number would pass over the network of the defendant Eircom, the incumbent telecommunications company and former monopoly that still enjoyed a dominant market share and control of most of the infrastructure.

From May 2000 onwards, Eircom imposed a telecommunications interc...

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